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“Now can you see itV Noiv/'’ 





THE 

HAPPY VENTURE 


BY 

EDITH BALLINGER PRICE 

w 

Authoh of “Blue Magic,” “Us and the Bottleman,” 
“Silver Shoal Light,” etc. 


illustrated by 

THE AUTHOR 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 
1921 



Copyright, 1920, 1921, by 
The Century Co. 


SEP 121921 

/ /■ 


0)C!,AG24280 

•Ko V 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I Taubs in the Rain 3 

II Havoo 17 

III Up Stakes 30 

IV The Fine Old Farmhouse .... 40 
V The Wheels Begin to Turn ... 55 

VI The Other Side op the Hedge ... 65 

VII A-Maying 82 

VIII Work 93 

IX Fame Comes Courting 114 

X Ventures and Adventures .... 121 

XI The Nine Gifts 136 

XII Roses IN THE Moonlight’^ .... 150 

XIII ‘^The Sea is a Tyrant’’ 160 

XIV The Celestine Plays Her Part . . 172 

XV Martin! 183 

XVI Another Home-Coming 191 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


‘'Now can you see it? Nowf^* . 


The Maestro sat down beside Kirk 


. Frontispiece 

PACING PAGE 

. ... 84 


The slack length of it flew suddenly aboard . .162 

“Phil — ^Phil!’’ Kirk was saying then . . . 182 




THE 

HAPPY VENTURE 



THE HAPPY VENTURE 


CHAPTER I 

TALES IN THE BAIN 

should I your true love know, 

From another one? 

By his cockle hat and stafi, 

And his sandal shoon. . . 

I T was the fourth time that Felicia, at the 
piano, had begun the old song. Kenelm un- 
curled his long legs, and sat up straight on the 
window-seat. 

Why on earth so everlasting gloomy, Phil?^^ 
he said. ‘‘Isn’t the rain bad enough, without 
that dirge ? ’ ’ 

“The sky ’s ‘be-weeping’ him, just the way 
it says,” said Felicia. She made one complete 
revolution on the piano-stool, and brought her 
strong fingers down on the opening notes of 
another verse. 

is dead and gone, ladie, 

He is dead and — 

3 


4 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


Kenelm rose and removed his sister bodily 
from the stool, for all that she was fifteen and 
nearly as tall as he. 

^‘The piano ^s just been tuned, she pro- 
tested, struggling back, ‘^and the thing has such 
lovely, cruddly, doleful chords, lambkin.^’ 

^ Cruddly ^s not a word. And for pity^s 
sake, donT call me ‘lambM’’ 

‘‘Mr. Sturgis, then. Kirk likes it — donT 
you, honey 

The child who leaned beside the piano raised 
his dark head, and turned to her a vividly re- 
sponsive face and shadowed, unseeing eyes. 

“I like all the songs you sing,’^ he said, put- 
ting out his hand to her with the slight hesi- 
tancy of the blind. “Let her do it, Ken — 
please I 

Kenelm swung him suddenly up and perched 
him on top of the piano, where he recovered 
himself with a small gasp, half startled and 
half amused. He was never quite prepared for 
this brother who swooped on him unexpectedly 
out of the darkness. 

“Oh, take him off!’’ Felicia objected. “I 
don’t want his boots dangling at my ear while 
I ’m playing.” 


TALES IN THE EAIN 5 

^‘You ^re not playing,’’ Kenelm said; ‘‘and 
they ’re sandal shoon.” 

Felicia wrinkled her nose slightly at him, 
patted the warm brown of Kirk’s nearest leg, 
and dashed into the air of “Rolling down to 
Rio.” Kenelm joined in vigorously — it was a 
song he liked to sing — and Kirk chuckled appre- 
ciatively at the armadillo “dilloing in his 
armor.” Half-way through the second “Ro- 
o-o-o-oll,” when Kenelm was achieving start- 
ling coloratura effects at the top of his voice, 
Felicia stopped hke a shot. 

‘ ‘ Good gracious ! Mother ’s lying down with 
a headache,” she said. “I ’d quite forgotten.” 

“Why didn’t you tell a fellow!” Kenelm ex- 
claimed, a little breathless after his flight of 
notes ; “that ’s a mean shame. Cut along, Kirk, 
and tell her we ’re sorry. Here — ^here I am; 
slide down me.” 

Kirk descended from the piano by way of his 
brother’s arms, got his bearings at the door- 
way, and was gone hke a shadow up the stairs, 
his hand safely on the balustrade. 

“I hate her to have headaches,” Felicia said, 
swinging about a little on the piano-stool. 
“Poor dear! so often. She never used to.” 


6 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


Kenelm sat down again in the window-seat. 
He knew that Felicia was anxious about their 
mother, and he himself shared her anxiety. 
The queer code of fraternal secrecy made, him 
refrain from showing any sign of this to his 
sister, however. He yawned a little, and said, 
rather brusquely: 

‘ ‘ This rain ’s messing up the frost pretty well. 
There should n’t be much left of it by now.” 

‘^Crocuses soon ...” Felicia murmured. 
She began humming to an almost inaudible ac- 
companiment on the piano : 

‘‘ ‘Eing, ting, it is the merrie spring- 
time. . . .’ ” 

The rain rolled dully down the clouded win- 
dow-panes and spattered oft the English-ivy 
leaves below the sill. They quivered up and 
down on pale stems — bright, waxed leaves, as 
shining as though they had been varnished. 

Kirk drifted in and made his way to Felicia. 

“She ’s better,” he observed. “She said she 
was glad we were having fun.” He frowned 
a little as he ran his finger reflectively down 
Felicia’s sleeve. “But she ’s bothered. She 
has think-lines in her forehead. I felt ’em.” 

“You have a think-line in your own fore- 


TALES IN THE EAIN 7 

head,’^ said Felicia, promptly kissing it away. 

Don’t you bother.” 

Where ’s Ken?” Kirk demanded. 

‘‘In the window-seat.” 

Thither Kirk went, a tumble of expectancy, 
one hand before him and his head back. He 
leaped squarely upon Ken, and made known his 
wishes at once. They were very much what 
Kenelm expected. 

“See me a story — a long one I” 

“Oh, law!” Kenelm sighed; “you must think 
I ’m made of ’em. Don’t crawl all over me; 
let me ponder for two halves of a shake.” 

Kirk subsided against his brother’s arm, and 
a “think-line” now became manifest on 
Kenelm ’s brow. 

“See me a story” — Kirk’s own queer phrase 
— had been the demand during most of his eight 
years. It seemed as though he could never have 
enough of this detail of a world visible to every 
one but himself. He must know how every- 
thing looked — even the wind, which could cer- 
tainly be felt, and the rain, and the heat of the 
fire. From the descriptions he had amassed 
through his unwearied questioning, he had 
pieced out for himself a quaint little world of 
thing looked — even the wind, which could cer- 


8 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


color and light, — how like or unlike the actuality- 
no one could possibly tell. 

‘‘Blue is a cool thing, like water, or ice clink- 
ing in your glass, he would say, “and red ’s 
hot and sizzly, like the fire.’^ 

“Very true,^’ his informants would agree; 
but for all that, they could not be sure what 
his conception might be of the colors. 

Things were so confusing! There, for in- 
stance, were tomatoes. They were certainly 
very cool things, if you ate them sliced (when 
you were allowed), yet you were told that they 
were as red as red could be! And nothing 
could have been hotter than the blue tea-pot, 
when he picked it up by its spout ; but that, to 
be sure, was caused by the tea. Yet the hot 
was n T any color ; oh, dear ! 

Ken had not practised the art of seeing stories 
for nothing. He plunged in with little hesita- 
tion, and with a grand flourish. 

“My tale is of kings, it is,^^ he said; “ancient 
kings — Babylonian kings, if you must know. 
It was thousands and thousands of years ago 
they lived, and you ’d never be able to imagine 
the wonderful cities they built. They had hang- 
ing gardens that were — ’’ 


TALES IN THE EAIN 


9 


Felicia interrupted. 

‘Ht ’s easy to tell where you got this story. 
I happen to know where your marker is in the 
Ancient History.’’ 

‘‘Never you mind where I got it,” Ken said. 
“I ’m trying to describe a hanging garden, 
which is more than you could do. As I was 
about to say, the hanging gardens were built 
one above the other ; they did n ’t really hang 
at all. They sat on big stone arches, and the 
topmost one was so high that it stuck up over 
the city walls, whjich were quite high enough to 
begin with. The tallest kinds of trees grew in 
the gardens; not just flowers, but big palm- 
trees and oleanders and citron-trees, and pome- 
granates hung off the branches all ready to be 
picked, — dark greeny, purpley pomegranates 
all bursting open so that their bright red seeds 
showed like live coals (do you think I ’m getting 
this out of the history book, Phil?), and they 
were ^/ii^-shaped — ” he drew a pomegranate 
on the back of Kirk’s hand — “with a sprout 
of leaves at the top. And there were citrons 
— like those you chop up in fruit-cake — and 
grapes and roses. The queen could sit in the 
bottomest garden, or walk up to the toppest 


10 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


one by a lot of stone steps. She had a slave- 
person who went around behind her with a pea- 
cock-feathery fan, all green and gold and beauti- 
ful; and he waved the fan over her to keep 
her cool. Meanwhile, the king would be com- 
ing in at one of the gates of the city. They 
were huge, enormous brass gates, and they 
shone like the sun, bright, and the sun winked 
on the king’s golden chariot, too, and on the 
soldiers’ spears. 

‘‘He was just coming home from a lion-hunt, 
and was very much pleased because he ’d killed 
a lot of lions. He was really a rather horrid 
man,' — quite ferocious, and all, — ^but he wore 
most wonderful purple and red embroidered 
clothes, the sort you like to hear about. He 
had a tiara on, and golden crescents and rosettes 
blazed all over him, and he wore a mystic, sacred 
ornament on his chest, round and covered all 
over with queer emblems. He rode past the 
temple, where the walls were painted in differ- 
ent colors, one for each of the planets and such, 
because the Babylonish people worshipped 
those — orange for Jupiter, and blue for Mer- 
cury, and silver for the moon. And the king 
got out of his chariot and climbed up to where 


TALES IN THE KAIN 11 

the queen was waiting for him in the toppest 
gar — 

‘^DonT you tell me they were so domestic and 
all/^ Felicia objected. ‘‘They probably — 

“Who ’s seeing this story! Ken retorted. 
“You let me be. I say, the queen was waiting 
for him, and she gave him a lotus and a ripe 
pomegranate, and the slaves ran and got wine, 
and the people with harps played them, and she 
said — Here’s Mother!” 

Kirk looked quite taken aback for a moment 
at this apparently irrelevant remark of the 
Babylonian queen, till a faint rustle at the door- 
way told him that it was his own mother who 
had come in. 

She stood at the door, a slight, tired little 
person, dressed in one of the black gowns she 
had worn ever since the children’s father had 
died. 

“Don’t stop, Ken,” she smiled. “What did 
she say!” 

But either invention flagged, or self-conscious- 
ness intervened, for Kenelm said: 

“Blessed if I know what she did say! But 
at any rate, you ’ll agree that it was quite a 
garden, Kirky. I ’ll also bet a hat that you 


12 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


haven’t done your lesson for to-morrow. It ’s 
not your Easter vacation, if it is ours. Miss 
Bolton will hop you.” 

‘‘Think of doing silly reading-book things, 
after hearing all that,” Kirk sighed. 

“Suppose you had to do cuneiform writing on 
a dab of clay, like the Babylonish king,” Ken 
said; “all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking 
out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and 
let Mother sit here, laziness.” 

Kirk sighed again, a tremendous, pathetic 
sigh, designed to rouse sympathy in the breasts 
of his hearers. It roused none, and he wan- 
dered across the room and dragged an enor- 
mous book out upon the floor. He sprawled 
over it in a dim corner, his eyes apparently 
studying the fireplace, and his fingers following 
across the page the raised dots which spelled 
his morrow’s lesson. What nice hands he had, 
Felicia thought, watching from her seat, and 
how delicately yet strongly he used them I She 
wondered what he could do with them in 
later years. “They mustn’t be wasted,” she 
thought. She glanced across at Ken. He too 
was looking at Kirk, with an oddly sober 
expression, and when she caught his eye he 


TALES IN THE EAIN 


13 


grew somewhat red and stared out at the rain. 

‘‘Better, Mother dear?’’ Felicia asked, curl- 
ing down on a footstool at Mrs. Sturgis’s feet. 

“Eather, thank you,” said her mother, and 
fell silent, patting the arm of the chair as though 
she were considering whether or not to say 
something more. She said nothing, however, 
and they sat quietly in the falling dusk, Felicia 
stroking her mother’s white hand, and Ken 
humming softly to himseK at the window. Kirk 
and his book were almost lost in the comer — 
just a pale hint of the page, shadowed by the 
hand which moved hesitantly across it. The 
hand paused, finally, and Kirk demanded, 
“What ’s ‘u-g-h’ spell?” 

“It spells ‘Ugh’!” Ken grunted. “What on 
earth are you reading? Is that what Miss Bol- 
ton gives you?” 

“It ’s not my lesson,” Kirk said; “it ’s much 
further along. But I can read it. ’ ’ 

“You ’ll get a wigging. You ’d better stick 
to ‘The cat can catch the mouse,’ et cetera,^* 
“I finished that years ago,” said Kirk, loftily. 
“This is a different book, even. Listen to this : 
‘Ugh! There — sat — the dog with eyes — as — 
big as — as — ’ ” 


14 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


Tea-cups/^ said Felicia. 

‘T-e-a-c-’ yes, it is tea-cups,’’ Kirk con- 
ceded; ‘‘how did you know, Phil? — ‘as big as 
tea-cups, — staring — at — him. “You ’re a nice 
— fellow,’^ said the soldier, and he — sat him — 
on — the witch’s ap-ron, and took as many cop — 
copper shillings — as his — pockets would hold.’ ” 

“So that ’s it, is it?” Ken said. “Begin at 
the beginning, and let ’s hear it all.” 

“Ken,’^ said his mother, “that ’s in the back 
of the book. You shouldn’t encourage him to 
read things Miss Bolton hasnT given him.” 

“It ’ll do him just as much good to read that, 
as that silly stutf at the beginning. Phil and 
I always read things we weren’t supposed to 
have reached.” 

“But for him — ” Mrs. Sturgis murmured; 
“you and Phil were different, Ken. Oh, 
well, — ” 

For Kirk had turned back several broad 
pages, and began: 

“There came a soldier marching along the 
highroad — one, two ! one, two ! . . .” 

Little by little the March twilight settled 
deeper over the room. There was only a flicker 
on the brass andirons, a blur of pale blossoms 


TALES IN THE KAIN 


15 


where the potted azalea stood. The rain 
drummed steadily, and as steadily came the gen- 
tle modulations of Kirk’s voice, as the tale of 
‘^The Tinder-Box” progressed. 

It was the first time that he had ever read 
aloud anything so ambitious, and his hearers sat 
listening with some emotion — his mother filled 
with thankfulness that he had at last the key to 
a vast world which he now might open at a 
touch ; Ken, with a sort of half-amazed pride in 
the achievements of a little brother who was 
surmounting such an obstacle. Felicia sat gaz- 
ing across the dim room. 

^‘He ’s reading us a story!” she thought, 
over and over; ^^Kirk ’s reading to us, without 
very many mistakes!” She reflected that the 
book, for her, might as well be written in San- 
skrit. ought to know something about it,” 
she mused; ‘‘enough to help him! It ’s selfish 
and stupid not to! I ’ll ask Miss Bolton.” 

The soldier had gone only as far as the second 
dog’s treasure-room, when Maggie came to the 
door to say that supper was ready. From be- 
tween the dining-room curtains came the soft 
glow of the candles and the inviting chnk of 
dishes. 


16 


THE HAPPY VBNTUEE 


‘‘ ‘He threw — away all the copper — money he 
had, filled his — ^knapsack with silver,’ ” 
Elrk finished in a hurry, and shut the book with 
a bang. 

“I wouldn’t have done that,” he said, as 
Felicia took the hand he held out for some one 
to take; “I should think all the money he could 
possibly get would have been useful. ’ ’ 

“You ’ve said it!” Ken laughed. 

“Yes,” Mrs. Sturgis murmured with a sigh, 
“all the money one can get is useful. You read 
it very beautifully, darling — thank you. ’ ’ 

She kissed his forehead, and took her place at 
the head of the table, where the candles lit her 
gentle face and her brown eyes — filled now, 
with a sudden brimming tenderness. 


CHAPTER II 


HAVOO 

T he town ran, in its lower part, to the 
grimy water-front, where there was ever 
a noise of the unloading of ships, the shouts of 
teamsters, and the clatter of dray-horses’ big 
hoofs on bare cobblestones. Ken liked to walk 
there, even on such a dreary March day as this, 
when the horses splashed through puddles, and 
the funnels of the steamers dripped sootily 
black. He had left Felicia in the garden, in- 
vestigating the first promise of green under the 
leaf-coverlet of the perennial bed. Kirk was 
with her, questing joyously down the brick 
path, and breathing the warm, wet smell of the 
waking earth. 

Ken struck down to the docks ; even before he 
reached the last dingy street he could see the 
tall masts of a sailing-ship rising above the 
warehouse roofs. It was with a quickened beat 
of the heart that he ran the last few steps, and 

17 


18 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


saw her in all her quiet dignity — the Celestine, 
four-masted schooner. It was not often that 
sailing vessels came into this port. Most of the 
shipping consisted of tugs with their barges, 
high black freighters, rust-streaked ; and casual 
tramp steamers battered by every wind from 
St. John^s to Torres Straits. The Celestine 
was, herself, far from being a pleasure yacht. 
Her blutf hows were salt-rimed and her decks 
bleached and weather-bitten. But she towered 
above her steam-driven companions with such 
stalwart grace, such simple perfection, that 
Ken caught his breath, looking at her. 

The gang-plank was out, for she lay warped 
in to one of the wharves, and Ken went aboard 
and leaned at the rail beside a square man in a 
black jersey, who chewed tobacco and squinted 
observantly at the dock. From this person, at 
first inclined to be taciturn, Ken learned that 
the Celestine was sailing the next night, bound 
for Rio de J aneiro, ^ ‘ and mebbe further. ’ ’ Rio 
de Janeiro! And here she lay quietly at the 
slimy wharf, beyond which the gray northern 
town rose in a smoky huddle of chimney-pots. 

Behind Ken, some of the crew began hoisting 
the foresail to dry. He heard the rhythmic 


HAVOC 


19 


squeak of the halliards through the sheaves, and 
the scrape of the gaff going up. 

‘‘Go ^n lend ^em a hand, boy, since yer so gone 
on it,’^ the jerseyed one recommended quite un- 
derstandingly. So Ken went and hauled at a 
rope, and watched the great expanse of sodden 
gray canvas rise and shiver and straighten into 
a dark square against the sky. He imagined 
himself one of the crew of the Celestine, hoist- 
ing the foresail in a South American port. 

love to roll to Rio 
Some day before I^m old ...” 

The sail rose steadily to the unsung chorus. 
Ken was quite happy. 

He walked all the way home — it was a long 
walk — with his head full of plans for a seafar- 
ing life, and his nostrils still filled with the 
strange, fascinating, composite smell of the 
docks. 

Felicia met him at the gate. She looked 
quite done for, he thought, and she caught his 
sleeve. 

“Where have you been!’’ she said, with a 
queer little excited hitch in her voice. “I ’ve 
been almost wild, waiting for you. Mother’s 


20 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


headache is horribly worse ; she ’s gone to bed. 
A letter came this morning, I donT know what, 
but I think it has something to do with her 
being so ill. She simply cries and cries — a 
frightening sort of crying — and says, H canT — 
I canT!’ and wants Father to tell her what to 
do.” 

They were in the hall by this time. 

^ ‘ W ants Father! ^ ^ Ken said gravely. ‘ ‘ Have 
you got the doctor, Phil?” 

‘‘Not yet; I wanted to ask you.” 

“Get him — quick.” 

Ken ran upstairs. Halfway, he tumbled over 
something crouched beside the banisters. It 
was Kirk, quite wretched. He caught Ken’s 
ankle. 

“Mother ’s crying,” he said; “I can hear her. 
Oh, do something, Ken!” 

“I’m going to,” said his brother. “Don’t 
sit here in the dark and make yourself miser- 
able.” 

He recollected that the landing was no darker 
for Kirk than any other place, and added: 
“You ’re apt to be stepped on here — ^I nearly 
smashed you. Hop along and tell Maggie that 
I ’m as hungry as an ostrich.” 


HAVOC 


21 


But however hungry Ken may have been as 
he trudged home from the docks, he was not so 
now. A cold terror seized him as he leaned 
above his mother, who could not, indeed, stop 
her tears, nor tell him more than that she could 
not bear it, she could not. Ken had never be- 
fore felt quite so helpless. He wished, as much 
as she, that his father were there to tell them 
what to do — his tall, quiet father, who had al- 
ways counseled so well. He breathed a great 
thankful sigh when the doctor came in, with 
Felicia, white faced, peeping beside his shoul- 
der. Ken said, ‘H’m glad you ’ll take charge, 
sir,” and slipped out. 

He and Felicia stood in Kirk’s room, silently, 
and after what seemed an eternity, the doctor 
came out, tapping the back of his hand with his 
glasses. He informed them, with professional 
lack of emotion, that their mother was suffering 
from a complete nervous breakdown, from 
which it might take her months to recover. 

‘‘Evidently,’^ said he, “she has been anxious 
over something, previous to this, but some defi- 
nite shock must have caused the final collapse. ’ ’ 

He was a little man, and he spoke drily, with 
a maddening deliberation. 


22 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


There was a letter — this morning/’ Felicia 
said, faintly. 

‘Ht might be well to find the letter, in order 
to ascertain the exact nature of the shock,” 
said the doctor. 

Ken went to his mother’s room and searched 
her desk. He came back presently with a legal 
envelop, and his face was blank and half uncom- 
prehending. The doctor took the paper from 
him and skimmed the contents. 

‘‘Ah — hm. ‘United Stock . . . the mine hav- 
ing practically run out . . . war causing fur- 
ther depreciation . . . regret to inform you, 
. . . hm, yes. My dear young people, it ap- 
pears from this that your mother has lost a good 
deal of money — possibly all her money. I 
should advise your seeing her attorney at once. 
Undoubtedly he will be able to make a satisfac- 
tory adjustment.” 

He handed the paper back to Ken, who took 
it mechanically. Then, with the information 
that it would be necessary for their mother to 
go to a sanitorium to recuperate, and that he 
would send them a most capable nurse imme- 
diately, the doctor shpped out — a neat little 
figure, stepping along lightly on his toes. 


HAVOC 


23 


‘‘Can yon think straight, Ken?’^ Felicia said, 
later, in the first breathing pause after the doc- 
tor's departure and the arrival of the brisk 
young woman who took possession of the entire 
house as soon as she stepped over the threshold. 

“I^m trying to,^’ Ken replied, slowly. He 
began counting vaguely on his fingers. “It 
means Mother ^s got to go away to a nervous 
sanatorium place. It means we ’re poor. Phil, 
we may have to — I don ’t know what. ’ ’ 

“What do they do with people who have no 
money r’ Felicia asked dismally. “They send 
them to the poor-farm or something, don’t 
they?” 

“Don’t talk utter bosh, Phil! As if I ’d ever 
let you or Kirk go to the poor-f ai*m 1 ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Kirk ! ’ ’ Felicia murmured. ‘ ‘ Suppose they 
took him away! They might, you know — the 
State, and send him to one of those institu- 
tions!” 

“Oh, drop it!” snapped Ken. “We don’t 
even know' how much money it is Mother ’s 
lost. I don’t suppose she had it all in this 
bally mine. Who is her attorney, anyway?” 

“Mr. Dodge, — don’t you remember? Nice, 
with a pink, face and bristly hair. He came 


24 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


here long ago about Daddy business.’^ 

There was a swift rush of feet on the stairs, 
a pause in the hallway, and Kirk appeared at 
the door. 

told Maggie, said he, ^‘and supper's 
ready: And what 's specially nice is the toast, 
because I made it myself — only Norah told me 
when it was done.’' 

Ken and Felicia looked at one another, and 
wondered how much supper they could eat. 
Then Ken swung Kirk to his shoulder, and said: 

“All right, old boy, we ’ll come and eat your 
toast.” 

“Is the crackly lady taking care of Mother?” 
Kirk asked over a piece of his famous toast, as 
they sat at supper. 

“Yes,” said Felicia. “Her name ’s Miss 
McClough. Why, did you meet her?” 

“She said, ‘Don’t sit in people’s way when 
you see they ’re in a hurry,’ ” said Kirk, some- 
what grieved. “7 didn’t know she was com- 
ing. I don’t think I like her much. Her dress 
creaks, and she smells like the drug-store.” 

“She can’t help that,” said Ken; “ she ’s 
taking good care of Mother. And I told you the 
stairway was no place to sit, didn’t I?” 


HAVOC 


25 


‘‘I Ve managed to find out something , Ken 
told Felicia, next day, as he came downstairs. 
^‘Mother would talk about it, in spite of Miss 
McThing’s protests, and I came away as soon 
as I could. She says there ’s a little Fidelity 
stock that brings enough to keep her in the rest- 
place, so she feels a little better about that. 
(By the way, she tried to say she wouldn’t go, 
and I said she had to.) Then there ’s some- 
thing else — Eocky Head Granite, I think — that 
will give us something to live on. We ’ll have 
to see Mr. Dodge as soon as we can; I ’m all 
mixed up.” 

They did see Mr. Dodge, that afternoon. He 
was nice, as Felicia had said. He made her sit 
in his big revolving-chair, while he brought out 
a lot of papers and put on a pair of drooping 
gold eye-glasses to look at them. And the end 
of the afternoon found Ken and Felicia very 
much confused and a good deal more discour- 
aged than before. It seemed that even the 
Eocky Head Granite was not a very sound in- 
vestment, and that the staunch Fidelity was the 
only dependable source of income. 

‘‘And Mother must have that money, of 
course, for the rest-place,” Fehcia said. 


26 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


^^For Heaven’s sake, don’t tell her,” Ken 
muttered. 

His sister shot him one swift look of reproach 
and then turned to Mr. Dodge. She tried des- 
perately to be very businesslike. 

‘^What do you advise us to do, Mr. Dodge?” 
she said. ‘^Send away the servants, of 
course.” 

^^And Miss Bolton,” Ken said; ‘‘she’s an ex- 
pensive lady.” 

“Yes, Miss Bolton. I ’ll teach Kirk — can.” 

“How much is the rent of the house, Mr. 
Dodge, do you know?” Ken asked. Mr. Dodge 
did know, and told him. Ken whistled. “It 
sounds as though we ’d have to move, ’ ’ he said. 

“The lease ends April first,” said the attor- 
ney. 

“We could get a little tiny house some- 
where, ’ ’ Felicia suggested. ‘ ‘ Could n ’t you gel 
quite a nice one for six hundred dollars a year ? ” 

This sum represented, more or less, their en- 
tire income — ^minus the expenses of Hilltop 
Sanatorium. 

“But what would you eat?” Mr. Dodge in- 
quired gently. 

“Oh, dear, that ’s true!” said Felicia. 


HAVOC 27 

^‘And clothes! What do you think we bet- 
ter do! 

‘^You have no immediate relatives, as I re- 
members^ Mr. Dodge mused. 

^^None but our great-aunt, Miss Pelham,’^ 
Ken said, ‘^and she lives in Los Angeles. 

^^She ’s very old, too,’’ Phil said, “and lives 
in a tiny house. She ’s not at all well off ; we 
shouldn’t want to bother her. And there is 
Uncle Lewis.” 

“Oh, him!^* said Ken, gloomily. 

“It takes three months even to get an answer 
from a letter to him,” Felicia explained. 
“He ’s in the Philippines, doing something to 
Ignorants. ’ 

“Igorrotes, Phil,” Ken muttered. 

“He sounds unpromising,” Mr. Dodge 
sighed. “And there are no friends who would 
be sufficiently interested in your problem to 
open either their doors or their pocket-books ! ’ ’ 

“We don’t know many people here,” Felicia 
said. “Mother has n’t gone out very much for 
several years.” 

Ken flushed. “And we ’d rather people 
did n ’t open anything to us, anyhow, ’ ’ he said. 

“Except, perhaps, their hearts,” Mr. Dodge 


28 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


supplemented, their eyes, when they see 
your independent procedure ! ’ ’ He tapped his 
knee with his glasses. ‘‘My dear children, I 
suggest that you move to some other house — 
perhaps to some quaint little place in the coun- 
try, which would be much less expensive than 
anything you could find in town. Your mother 
had best go away, as the doctor advises — she 
will be much better looked after, and of course 
she mustn’t know what you do. I ’ll watch 
over this Rocky Head concern, and you may 
feel perfectly secure in the Fidelity. And don’t 
hesitate to ask me anything you want to know, 
at any time.” 

He rose, pushing back his papers. 

“Don’t we owe you something for all this, 
sir?” Ken asked, rather red. 

Mr. Dodge smiled. “One dollar, and other 
valuable considerations,” he said. 

Kenelm brought out his pocketbook, and care- 
fully pulled a dollar bill from the four which it 
contained. He presented it to Mr. Dodge, and 
Felicia said: 

‘ ‘ Thank you so very, very much ! ’ ’ 

“You ’re very welcome,” said the attorney, 
“and the best of luck to you alll” 


HAVOC 


29 


When the glass door had closed behind the 
pair, Mr. Dodge sat down before his desk and 
wiped his glasses. He looked at the dollar bill, 
and then he said — quite out loud — 

‘‘Poor, poor dears 


CHAPTER III 


UP STAKES 

T hat night, Kenelm could not sleep. He 
wall?:ed up and down his room in the dark. 
His own head ached, and he could not think 
properly. The one image which stood clearly 
out of the confusion was that of the Celestine, 
raising gracious spars above the house-tops. 
The more he thought of her, the more a plan 
grew in his tired mind. The crew of the Celes- 
tine must be paid quite well — he could send 
money home every week from different ports — 
he could send gold and precious things from 
South America. There would be one less per- 
son to feed at home ; he would be earning money 
instead of spending it. 

He turned on his light, and quickly gathered 
together his hockey sweater, his watch-cap, and 
an old pair of trousers. He made them into a 
bundle with a few other things. Then he wrote 
a letter, containing many good arguments, and 

30 


UP STAKES 


31 


pinned it on Felicia door. He tiptoed down- 
stairs and out into the night. From the street 
he could see the faint green light from his 
mother ^s room, where Miss McClough was sit- 
ting. He turned and ran quickly, without stop- 
ping to think. 

No one was abroad but an occasional police- 
man, twirling his night-stick. On the wharves 
the daylight confusion was dispelled ; there was 
no clatter of teaming, no sound but the water 
fingering dank piles, and the little noises aboard 
sleeping vessels. But the Celestine was awake. 
Lights gleamed aboard her, men were stirring, 
the great mass of her canvas blotted half the 
stars. She was sailing, that night, for Rio de 
J aneiro. 

Ken slipped into the shadow of a pile-head, 
waiting his chance. His heart beat suffocat- 
ingly; his hands were very cold. Quietly he 
stepped under the gang-plank, swung a leg over 
it, drew himself aboard, and lay flat on deck 
beside the rail of the Celestine in a pool of 
shade. A man tripped over him and stumbled 
back with an oath. The next instant Ken was 
hauled up into the light of a lantern. 

Stowaway, ehU’ growled a squat man in 


32 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


dungaree. ‘‘Chuck him overboard, Sam, an’ 
let him swim home to his mamma.” 

In that moment, Ken knew that he could 
never have sailed with the Gelesiine, that he 
would have slipped back to the wharf before she 
cast loose her hawsers. He looked around him 
as if he had just awakened from sleep-walking 
and did not know where he found himself. He 
gazed up at the gaunt mainmast, black against 
the green night sky, at the main topsail, shak- 
ing still as the men hauled it taut. 

“I ’m not a stowaway,” he said; “I ’m going 
ashore now.” 

He walked down the gang-plank with all the 
dignity he could muster, and never looked be- 
hind him as he left the wharf. He could hear 
the rattle of the Gelestine^s tackle, and the 
boom, boom of the sails. Once clear of the 
docks he ran, blindly. 

“Fool!” he whispered. “Oh, what a fool! 
what a senseless idiot!” 

The house was dark as he turned in at the 
gate. He stopped for an instant to look at its 
black bulk, with Orion setting behind the chim- 
ney-pots. 

“I was going to leave them — all alone!” 


UP STAKES 


33 


lie whispered fiercely. ‘‘Good Heavens!’’ 

He removed the letter silently from Felicia’s 
door, — he was reassured by seeing its white 
square before he reached it, — and crept to his 
own room. There a shadowy figure was curled 
up on the floor, and it was crying. 

“Kirk! What’s up?” Ken lifted him and 
held him rather close. 

“You weren’t here,” Kirk sniffed; “I got 
sort of rather 1-lonely, so I thought I ’d come in 
with you — and the b-bed was perfectly empty, 
and I could n’t find you. I t-thought you were 
teasing me.” 

“I was taking a little walk,” Ken said. 
“Here, curl up in bed — you ’re frozen. No, 
I ’m not going away again — never any more, 
ducky. It was nice in the garden, ’ ’ he added. 

“The garden?” Kirk repeated, still clinging 
to him. “Bht you smell of — of — oh, rope, and 
sawdust, and — and, Ken, your face is wet!” 

Mrs. Sturgis protested bitterly against going 
away. She felt quite able to stay at home. To 
be sure, she could n ’t sleep at all, and her head 
ached all the time, and she couldn’t help cry- 
ing over almost everything — but it was impos- 


34 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


sible that she should leave the children. In 
spite of her half-hysterical protests, the next 
week saw her ready to depart for Hilltop with 
Miss McClough, who was to take the journey 
with her. 

^^You neednT worry a scrap, laughed 
Felicia, quite convincingly, at the taxi door. 

We Ve seen Mr. Dodge, and there ’ll be money 
enough. You just get well as quick as ever you 
can. ’ ’ 

‘‘Good-by, my darlings,” faltered poor Mrs. 
Sturgis, quite ready to collapse again. ‘ ‘ Good- 
by, Kirk — my precious, precious baby! How 
can I! ” 

And the taxicab moved away, giving them 
just one glimpse of their mother with her poor 
head on Miss McClough ’s capable shoulder. 

“Well,” Ken remarked, “here we are.” 

And there was really nothing more to be said 
on the subject. 

Such a strange house! Maggie and Norah 
gone ; Felicia cooking queer meals — principally 
poached eggs — in the kitchen; Miss Bolton fail- 
ing to appear every morning at ten o’clock as 
she had done for the last three years; Mother 
gone, and not even a letter from her — nothing 


UP STAKES 35 

but a type-written report from the physician at 
Hilltop. 

Gone also, as Kirk discovered, was the low- 
boy beside the library door. It was a most 
satisfactory piece of furniture. From its left- 
hand corner you could make a direct line to the 
window-seat. It also had smoothly graceful 
brass handles, and a surface delicious to the 
touch. When Kirk, stumbling in at the library 
door, failed to encounter it as usual, he was 
as much startled as though he had found a ser- 
pent in its stead. He tried for it several times, 
and when his hands came against the book- 
shelves he stopped dead, very much puzzled and 
quite lost. Felicia found him there, standing 
still and patiently waiting for the low-boy to 
materialize in its accustomed place. 

‘‘Where is it?’’ he asked her. 

“It ’s not there, honey,” she said. “We ’re 
going to a different house, and it ’s sent away.” 

“A different house! When? What do you 
mean?” 

“We ’ve finished renting this one,” said 
Felicia. “We thought it would be nice to go to 
another one — in the country. Oh, you ’ll like 
it.” 


36 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


‘‘How queer Kirk mused. “Perhaps I 
shall. But I don’t know about this corner; it 
used to be covered up. Please start me right. ’ ’ 
She did so, and then ran off to attend to a 
peculiar pudding which was boiling over on the 
stove. She had not told him that the low-boy 
was sent away to be sold. When she and Ken 
had discovered the appalling sum it would cost 
to move the furniture anywhere, they heart- 
brokenly concluded that the low-boy and va- 
rious other old friends must go to help settle 
the accounts of Miss Bolton and the nurse. 

“There are some things,” Ken stoutly pro- 
nounced, however, “that we ’ll take with us, if 
I have to go digging ditches to support ’em. 
And some we ’ll leave with Mr. Dodge — I know 
he won’t mind a few nice tables and things.” 

For the “different house” was actually en- 
gaged. Mr. Dodge shook his head when he 
heard that Ken had paid the first quarter’s 
rent without having even seen the place. 

“Fine old farm-house,” said the advertise- 
ment; “Peach and apple orchards. Ten acres 
of land. Near the bay. Easy reach of city. 
Only $15.00 per month. ’ ’ 

There was also a much blurred photograph 


UP STAKES 


37 


of the fine old farm-house, from which it was 
diflBcult to deduce much except that it had a 
gambrel roof. 

^^But it does sound quite wonderful,^’ Felicia 
said to the attorney. ‘‘We thought we would 
nT go to see it because of its costing so much to 
travel there and back again. But donT you 
think it ought to be nice ? Peach and apple or- 
chards, — and only fifteen dollars a month ! ^ ^ 

“I dare say it is wonderful,’’ said Mr. Dodge, 
smiling. “At any rate, Asquam itself is a very 
pretty little bayside place — ’ve been there. 
Fearfully hard to get your luggage, but charm- 
ing once you ’re there. Don ’t forget me ! I ’ll 
always be here. And you ’d better have 
a little more cash for your traveling expenses.” 

“I hope it really came out of our money,” 
Ken said, when he saw the cash. 

Nothing but a skeleton of a house, now. No 
landmarks at all were left for Kirk, and he 
tumbled over boxes and crates, and lost himself 
in the bare, rugless halls. The beds that were 
to be taken to Asquam were still set up, — they 
would be crated next day, — but there was really 
nothing else left in the rooms. Three excited 
people, two of them very tired, ate supper on 


38 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


the corner of the kitchen table — which was not 
going to the farm-house. That house flowered 
hopefully in its new tenants^ minds. Felicia 
saw it, tucked between its orchards, gray roof 
above gnarled limbs, its wide stone doorstep in- 
viting one to sit down and look at the view of 
the bay. And there would be no need of spend- 
ing anything there except that fifteen dollars 
a month — ^‘and something for food,^^ Felicia 
thought, ‘‘which oughtn’t to be much, there in 
the country with hens and things.” 

It amused Kirk highly — going to bed in an 
empty room. He put his clothes on the floor, 
because he could find no other place for them. 
Felicia remonstrated and suggested the end of 
the bed. 

“Everything else yon own is packed, you 
know,” said she. “You ’d better preserve 
those things carefully.” 

“Sing to me,” he said, when he was finally 
tucked in. “It ’s the last night — and — every- 
thing ’s so ugly. I want to pretend it ’s just 
the same. Sing ^ Do-do, petit frere,^ Phil.” 

Felicia sat on the edge of the bed and sang the 
little old French lullaby. She had sung it to 
him often when she was quite a small girl, and 


UP STAKES 


39 


lie a very little boy. She remembered just how 
he used to look — a cuddly, sleepy three-year- 
old, with a tumble of dark hair and the same 
grave, unlit eyes. He was often a little fright- 
ened, in those days, and needed to hold a warm 
substantial hand to link him with the mysterious 
world he could not see. 

*^Do-do, p'tit frere, do-do/* 

His hand groped down the blanket, now, for 
hers, and she took it and sang on a bit unsteadily 
in the echoing bareness of the dismantled room. 

A long time afterward, when Kenelm was 
standing beside his window looking out into the 
starless dark, Felicia’s special knock sounded 
hollowly at his door. 

She came over to him, and stood for a while 
silently. Then she turned and said suddenly 
in a shy, low voice : 

‘^Oh, Ken, I don’t know how you feel about it, 
but — but, I' think, whatever awful is going to 
happen, we must try to keep things beautiful for 
Kirk.” 

‘‘I guess we must,” Ken said, staring out. 
’d trust you to do it, old Phil. Cut along 
now to bed,” he added gruffly; ^‘we ’ll have to 
be up like larks to-morrow.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE FINE OLD FAEM-HOUSE 

A SQUAM proper is an old fishing-village 
on the bayside. The new Asquam has in- 
truded with its narrow-eaved frame cottages 
among the gray old houses, and has shouldered 
away the colonial Merchants’ Hall with a mov- 
ing-picture theater, garish with playbills and 
posters. Two large and well-patronized sum- 
mer hotels flourish on the highest elevation 
(Asquam people say that their town is flat- 
ter ’n a johnnycake”), from which a view of the 
open sea can be had, as well as of the peninsulas 
and islands which crowd the bay. 

On the third day of April the hotels and many 
of the cottages were closed, with weathered 
shutters at the windows and a general air of 
desolation about their windy piazzas. Asquam, 
both new and old, presented a rather bleak and 
dismal appearance to three persons who 
alighted thankfully from the big trolley-car in 
40 


THE FINE OLD FARM-HOUSE 41 


which they had lurched through miles of flat, 
mist-hung country for the past forty minutes. 

The station-agent sat on a tilted-up box and 
discussed the new arrivals with one of his ever- 
present cronies. 

“Whut they standin’ ther' ferT’ he said. 
^^Some folks ainT got enough sense to go in 
outen the rain, seems so.’’ 

’T ain’t rainin’ — ^not so ’s to call it so,” said 
the crony, whose name was Smith. ‘ ‘ The gell ’s 
pretty.” 

‘‘Ya-as, kind o’,” agreed the station-agent, 
tilting back critically. ^‘Boy ’s upstandin’.” 

Which one?” 

‘‘Big ’n. Little ’un ain’t got no git-up- ’n ’-git 
fer one o’ his size. Look at him holdin’ to her 
hand.” 

“Sunthin’ ails him,” Smith said. “Ain’t all 
there I guess.” 

The station-agent nodded a condescending 
agreement, and cocked his foot on another box. 
At this moment the upstanding boy detached 
himself from his companions, and strode to 
where the old man sat. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “can you tell 
me how far it is to the Baldwin farm, and 


42 THE HAPPY VENTUEE 

whether any of Mr. Sturgis’s freight has come 

yetr’ 

“Baldwin fa’mf” and the station-agent 
scratched his ear. “Oh, you mean out on the 
Winterbottom Eoad, hey? ’Beout two mile.” 

“And Mr. Sturgis’s freight?” 

“Nawthin’ come fer that name,” said the 
agent, “’less these be them.” He indicated 
four small packages in the baggage-room. 

“Oh no,” said Ken, “they ’re big things — 
beds, and things like that. Well, please let me 
know if they do come. I ’m Mr. Sturgis.” 

“Oh, you be,” said the agent, comprehen- 
sively. 

“Ain’t gonna walk away out to the Baldwin 
place with all them valises, air you ? ’ ’ Smith in- 
quired, breaking silence for the first time. 

“I don’t know how else we ’ll get there,” Ken 
said. 

''Yay — Hop!” shouted Smith, unexpectedly, 
with a most astonishing siren-like whoop. 

Before Ken had time to wonder whether it 
was a prearranged signal for attack, or merely 
that the man had lost his wits, an ancient per- 
son in overalls and a faded black coat appeared 
from behind the baggage-house. 


THE FINE OLD FARM-HOUSE 43 


^^Hey! Well?^’ said he. 

^‘Take these folks up to the Baldwin place,’’ 
Smith commanded; ‘‘and don’t ye go losin’ no 
wheels this time — ye got a young lady aboard.” 
At which sally all the old men chuckled 
creakily. 

But the young lady showed no apprehension, 
only some relief, as she stepped into the totter- 
ing surrey which Hop drove up beside the plat- 
form. As the old driver slapped the reins on 
the placid horse ’s woolly back, the station-agent 
turned to Smith. 

“George,” he said, “the little ’un ain’t 
cracked. He ’s blind.” 

“Well, gosh!” said Smith, with feeling. 

Winterbottom Road unrolled itself into a 
white length of half-laid dust, between blown, 
sweet-smelling bay-clumps and boulder-filled 
meadows. 

“Is it being nice?” Kirk asked, for the twen- 
tieth time since they had left the train for the 
trolley-car. 

Felicia had been thanking fortune that she ’d 
remembered to stop at the Asquam Market and 
lay in a few provisions. She woke from calcu- 
lations of how many meals her family could 


44 THE HAPPY VENTURE 

make of the supplies she had bought, and looked 
about. 

‘‘We Ye near the bay,^^ she said; “that is, 
you can see little silvery flashes of it between 
trees. They Ye pointy trees — junipers, I think, 
and there are a lot of rocks in the fields, and 
wild-flowers. Nothing like any place you Ve 
ever been in — wild, and salty, and — ^yes, quite 
nice.^^ 

They passed several low, sturdy farm-houses, 
and one or two boarded-up summer cottages; 
then two white chimneys showed above a dark 
green tumble of trees, and the ancient Hopkins 
pointed with his whip saying: 

“Ther’ you be. Kind o^ dull this time year, 
I guess ; but my ! Asquam Y real uppy, come 
summer — machines a-goin^, an^ city folks an^ 
such. Reckon I ’ll leave you at the gate where 
I kin turn good.” 

The flap-flop of the horse’s hoofs died on Win- 
terbottom Road, and no sound came but the 
wind sighing in old apple-boughs, and from 
somewhere the melancholy creaking of a swing- 
ing shutter. The gate-way was grown about 
with grass; Ken crushed it as he forced open 
the gate, and the faint, sweet smell rose. Kirk 


THE FINE OLD FAEM-HOHSE 45 


held Felicia’s sleeve, for she was carrying 
two bags. He stumbled eagerly through the 
tall dry grass of last summer’s unmown 
growth. 

‘‘Now can you see it? Nowf^^ 

But Felicia had stopped, and Kirk stopped, 
too. 

“Are we there? Why don’t you say any- 
thing?” 

Felicia said nothing because she could not 
trust her voice. Kirk knew every shade of it; 
she could not deceive him. Gaunt and gray the 
“fine old farm-house” stood its ground before 
them. Old it assuredly was, and once fine, per- 
haps, as its solid square chimneys and mullioned 
windows attested. But oh, the gray grimness 
of it ! the sagging shutter that creaked, the bur- 
docks that choked the stone door-step, the deso- 
late wind that surged in the orchard trees and 
would not be still! 

Ken did what Felicia could not do. He 
laughed — a real laugh, and swept Kirk into 
warm, familiar arms. 

“It ’s a big, jolly, fine old place!” he said. 
“Its windows twinkle merrily, and the front 
door is only waiting for the key I have in my 


46 THE HAPPY VENTUEE 

pocket. We Ve got home, Quirk — haven't we, 
Phil?'^ 

Felicia blessed Ken. She almost fancied that 
the windows did twinkle kindly. The big front 
door swung open without any discourteous hes- 
itation, and Ken stood in the hall. 

‘^Phew — dark!^’ he said. ‘‘Wait here, you 
fellows, while I get some shutters open.’’ 

They could hear his footsteps sound hollowly 
in the back rooms, and shafts of dusky light, 
preceded by hammerings and thumpings, began 
presently to band the inside of the house. Fe- 
licia stepped upon the painted floor of the bare 
hall, glanced up the narrow stairs, and then 
stood in the musty, half-lit emptiness of what 
she guessed to be the living-room, waiting for 
Ken. Kirk did not explore. He stood quite 
still beside his sister, sorting out sounds, an- 
alyzing smells. Ken came in, very dusty, rub- 
bing his hands on his trousers. 

“Lots of fireplaces, anyway,” he said. “Put 
down your things — ^if you ’ve anywhere to put 
’em. I ’ll load all the duffle into this room and 
see if there ’s any wood in the woodshed. 
Glory! No beds, no blankets! There ’ll have 
to be wood, if the orchard primeval is sacri- 


THE FINE OLD FAEM-HOUSE 47 


ficed!^^ And he went, w'histling blithely. 

‘^This is an adventure.’’ Felicia whispered 
dramatically to Kirk. ‘‘We ’ve never had a 
real one before; have we?” 

“Oh, it ’s nice !” Kirk cried suddenly. “It ’s 
low, and stiU, and — the house wants us, Phil!” 

“The house wants us,” murmured Felicia. 
“I believe that ’s going to help me.” 

It was quite the queerest supper that the three 
had ever cooked or eaten. Perhaps “cooked” 
is not exactly the right word for what happened 
to the can of peas and the can of baked beans. 
Ken did find wood — not in the woodshed, but 
strewing the orchard grass; hard old apple- 
wood, gray and tough. It burned merrily 
enough in the living-room fireplace, and the 
chimney responded with a hollow rushing as the 
hot air poured into it. 

“It makes it seem as if there were something 
alive here besides us, anyway,” Felicia said. 

They were all sitting on the hearth, warming 
their fingers, and when the apple-wood fire 
burned down to coals that now and again 
spurted short-lived flame, they set the can of 
peas and the can of baked beans among the 


48 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


embers. They turned them gingerly from time 
to time with two sticks, and laughed a great 
deal. The laughter echoed about in the empty 
stillness of the house. 

Ken’s knife was of the massive and useful 
sort that contains a whole array of formidable 
tools. These included a can-opener, which now 
did duty on the smoked tins. It had been previ- 
ously used to punch holes in the tops of the 
cans before they went among the coals — ‘Hor 
we don’t want the blessed things blowing up,” 
Ken had said. Nothing at all was the matter 
with the contents of the cans, however, in spite 
of the strange process of cookery. The Sturg- 
ises ate peas and baked beans on chunks of un- 
buttered bread (cut with another part of Ken’s 
knife) and decided that nothing had ever tasted 
quite so good. 

‘‘No dish-washing, at any rate,” said Ken; 
“we ’ve eaten our dishes.” 

Kirk chose to find this very entertaining, and 
consumed another “bread-plate,” as he termed 
it, on the spot. 

The cooking being finished, more gnarly 
apple-wood was put on the fire, and the black, 
awkward shadows of three figures leaped out 


THE FINE OLD FAEM-HOUSE 49 


upon the bare wall and danced there in the 
ruddy gloom. Bedtime loomed nearer and 
nearer as a grave problem, and Ken and Felicia 
were silent, each wondering how the floor could 
be made softest. 

‘‘The Japanese sleep on the floor,’’ Ken said, 
“and they have blocks of wood for pillows. 
Our bags are the size, and, I imagine, the con- 
sistency, of blocks of wood. N^est-ce pas, oui, 
ouiV’ 

“I ’d rather sleep on a rolled-up something- 
or-other out of my bag than on the bag itself, 
any day — or night,” Felicia remarked. 

“As you please,” Ken said; “but act quickly. 
Our brother yawns.” 

“Bedtime, honey,” Felicia laughed to Kirk. 
“Even queerer than supper-time was.” 

“A bed by night, a hard- wood floor by day,” 
Ken misquoted murmurously. 

“Hard-wood!” Felicia sniffed. ^'Eard 
wood ! ’ ’ 

The problem now arose : which was most to 
be desired, an overcoat under you to soften the 
floor, or on top of you to keep you warm? 

“If he has my overcoat, it ’ll do both,” Ken 
suggested. “Put his sweater on, too.” 


50 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


“But what T1 you doP’ Kirk objected. 

“Poll up in your overcoat, of course,’^ Ken 
said. 

This also entertained Kirk. 

“No, but really he said, sober all at once. 

“HonT you fret about me. I ’ll haul it away 
from you after you ’re asleep.” 

And Kirk snuggled into the capacious folds 
of Ken’s Burberry, apparently confident that 
his brother really would claim it when he needed 
it. 

Ken and Felicia sat up, feeding the fire occa- 
sionally, until long after Kirk’s quiet breathing 
told them that he was asleep. 

“Well, we ’ve made rather a mess of things, 
so far,” Ken observed, somewhat cheerlessly. 

“We were ninnies not to think that none of 
the stuff would have come,” Felicia said. 
“We ’ll have to do something before to-morrow 
night. This is all right for once, hut — !” 

“Goodness knows when the things will come,” 
said Ken, poking at the fore-stick. “The old 
personage said that all the freight, express, 
everything, comes by that weird trolley-line, at 
its own convenience.” 

“Should n’t you think that they ’d have some- 


THE FINE OLD FARM-HOUSE 51 


thing dependable, in a sunmier place Felicia 
sighed. ‘‘Oh, it seems as if we ^d been living 
for years in houses with no furniture in them. 
And the home things will simply rattle, here.’^ 
“I wish we could have brought more of 
them,’^ Ken said. “We dl have to rout around 
to-morrow and buy an oil-stove or something 
and a couple of chairs to sit on. Ah hum! 
Let^s turn in, Phil. We Ve a tight room 
and a fire, anyhow. Shall you be warm 
enough?^’ 

‘ ‘ Plenty. I Ve my coat, and a sweater. But 
what are you going to doP^ 

‘ ‘ Oh, I ’ll sit up a bit longer and stoke. And 
really, Edrk’s overcoat spreads out farther than 
you ’d think. He ’s tallish, nowadays.” 

Felicia discovered that there are ways and 
ways of sleeping on the floor. She found, after 
sundry writhings, the right way, and drifted off 
to sleep long before she expected to. 

Ken woke later in the stillness of the last 
hours of night. The room was scarcely lit by 
the smoldering brands of the fire; its silence 
hardly stirred by the murmurous hissing of the 
logs. Without, small marsh frogs trilled their 
silver welcome to the spring, an unceasing jingle 


52 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


of tiny bell-notes. Kirk was cuddled close be- 
side Ken, and woke abruptly as Ken drew him 
nearer. 

‘‘You didn’t take your overcoat,” he whis- 
pered. 

“We ’ll both have it, now,” his brother said. 
“Curl up tight, old man; it ’ll wrap round the 
two of us. ’ ’ 

“Is it night still?” Kirk asked. 

“Black night,” Ken whispered; “stars at the 
window, and a tree swaying across it. And in 
here a sort of dusky lightness — dark in the cor- 
ners, and shadows on the walls, and the fire 
glowing away. Phil ’s asleep on the other side 
of the hearth, and she looks very nice. And 
listen — hear the toads ? ’ ’ 

“Is that what they are? I thought it was a 
fairy something. They make nice noises ! 
Where do they live?” 

“In some marsh. They sit there and fiddle 
away on bramble roots and sing about various 
things they like.” 

“What nice toads!” murmured Kirk. 

Sh-sh!^* whispered Ken; “we ’re waking 
Phil. Good night — good morning, I mean. 
Warm enough now?” 


THE PINE OLD FAEM-HOUSE 53 


‘‘Yes. Oh, Ken, are nH we having funP’ 

“Aren’t we, though I” breathed his brother, 
pulling the end of the Burberry over Kirk’s 
shoulders. 

The sun is a good thing. It clears away not 
only the dark shadows in the corners of empty 
rooms, but also the gloom that settles in anxious 
people’s minds at midnight. The rising of the 
sun made, to be sure, small difference to Kirk, 
whose mind harbored very little gloom, and was 
lit principally by the spirits of those around 
him. Consequently, when his brother and sis- 
ter began reveling in the clear, cold dawn, Kirk 
executed a joyous little fos sent in the middle of 
the living-room floor and set off on a tour of ex- 
ploration. He returned from it with his fingers 
very dusty, and a loop of cobwebs over his hair. 

“It ’s all comers,” he said, as Felicia caught 
him to brush him off, steps. Two steps 

down and one up, and just when you aren’t 
’specting it.” 

“ You ’d better go easy,” Ken counseled, “un- 
til you ’ve had a personally conducted tour. 
You ’ll break your neck. ’ ’ 

“I ’m being careful. And I know already 


54 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


about this door. There ’s a kink in the wall, 
and then a hump in the floor-boards just before 
you get there. It ^s an exciting house. ’ ’ 

‘‘That it is!’’ said Ken, reaching with a 
forked stick for the handle of the galvanized 
iron pail which sat upon the fire. Nobody ever 
heard of boiling eggs in a galvanized iron pail, 
but that is exactly what the Sturgises did. The 
pail, in an excellent state of preservation, had 
been found in the woodshed. The pump yielded, 
unhesitatingly, any amount of delicious cold 
water, and though three eggs did look surpris- 
ingly small in the bottom of the pail, they 
boiled quite as well as if they ’d been in a sauce- 
pan. 

“Only think of all the kettles and things I 
brought!” Felicia mourned. “We ’ll have to 
buy some plates and cups, though, Ken.” Most 
of the Sturgis china was reposing in a well- 
packed barrel in a room over Mr. Hodge’s 
garage, accompanied by many other things for 
which their owners longed. 

“How the dickens do we capture the eggs?” 
Ken demanded. “Pigs in clover ’s not in it. 
Lend a hand, Phil!’^ 


CHAPTEE V 


THE WHEELS BEGIN TO THEN 

K en walked to Asquam almost immediately 
after breakfast, and Felicia explored their 
new abode most thoroughly, inside and out. 
Comers and steps there were in plenty, as Kirk 
had said; it seemed as if the house had been 
built in several pieces and patched together. 
Two biggish rooms downstairs, besides the 
kitchen ; a large, built-in, white-doored closet in 
the living-room, — quite jolly, Felicia thought, — 
rusty nails driven in unbelievable quantities 
in all the walls. She could nT imagine how 
any one could have wanted to hang anything in 
some of the queer places where nails sprouted, 
and she longed to get at them with a claw-ham- 
mer. 

Upstairs there was one big room (for Ken 
and Kirk, Phil thought), a little one for herself, 
and what she immediately named ‘‘The Poke- 
Hole’’ for trunks and such things. When 
Mother came home, as come she must, the extra 
downstairs room could be fitted up for her, 
55 


56 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


Felicia decided — or the boys could take it over 
for themselves. The upstairs rooms were all 
under the eaves, and, at present, were hot and 
musty. Felicia pounded open the windows, 
which had small, old-fashioned panes, somewhat 
lacking in putty. In came the good April air, 
fresh after the murk of yesterday, and smelling 
of salt, and heathy grass, and spring. It sum- 
moned Felicia peremptorily, and she ran down- 
stairs and out to look at the ‘ ‘ ten acres of land, 
peach and apple orchards.^’ 

Kirk went, too, his hand in hers. 

‘‘It ’s an easy house,’’ he confided. “You ’d 
think it would be hard, but the floor ’s different 
all over — bumpy, and as soon as I find out 
which bump means what, I ’ll know how to go 
all over the place. I dare say it ’s the same out 
here. ’ ’ 

Felicia was not so sure. It seemed a track- 
less waste of blown grass for one to navigate 
in the dark. It was always a mystery to her 
how Kirk found his way through the mazy con- 
fusion of unseen surroundings. Now, on un- 
familiar ground, he was unsure of himself, but 
in a place he knew, it was seldom that he asked 
or accepted guidance. 


THE' WHEELS BEGIN TO TURN 57 


The house was not forbidding, Felicia de- 
cided — only tired, and very shabby. The bur- 
docks at the doorstep could be easily disposed 
of. It was a wide stone doorstep, as she had 
hoped and from it, though there was not much 
view of the bay, there were nice things to be 
seen. Before it, the orchard dropped away at 
one side, leaving a wide vista of brown mead- 
ows, sown with more of the pointy trees and 
grayed here and there by rocks; beyond that, 
a silver slip of water, and the far shore blue, 
blue in the distance. To the right of the house 
the land rolled away over another dun meadow 
that stopped at a rather civilized-looking hedge, 
above which rose a dense tumble of high trees. 
To the left lay the overgrown dooryard, the old 
lichened stone wall, and the sagging gate which 
opened to Winterbottom Road. Felicia tried 
to describe it all to Kirk, and wondered as she 
gazed at him, standing beside her with the 
eager, listening look his face so often wore, 
how much of it could mean anything to him 
but an incomprehensible string of words. 

Ken returned from Asquam in Hop^s chariot, 
surrounded by bundles. 

‘‘Luxury!’^ he proclaimed, when the spoils 


58 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


were unloaded. ‘‘An oil-stove, two burners — 
and food, and beautiful plates with posies on 
’em — and tin spoons ! And I met Mrs. Hopkins, 
and she almost fainted when I told her we ’d 
slept on the floor. She wanted us to come to 
her house, but it ’s the size of a butter-box, and 
stuffy; so she insisted on sending three quilts. 
Behold! And the oil-stove was cheap because 
one of the doors was broken (which I can fix). 
So there you are!” 

“No sign of the goods, I suppose?” 

“Our goods? Law, no! Old Mr. Thing- 
ummy put on his spectacles and peered around 
as if he expected to find them behind the door !” 

“Oh, my only aunt! They are wonderful 
plates!” Felicia cried, as she extracted one 
from its wrapper. 

‘ ‘ That ’s my idea of high art, ’ ’ Ken said, “I 
got them at the Asquam Utility Emporium. 
And have you remarked the chairs? Mrs. Hop 
sent those, too. They were in her corn-crib, — 
on the rafters, — and she said if we didn’t see 
convenient to bring ’em back, never mind, 
’cause she was plumb tired of clutterin’ ’em 
round from here to thar.” 

“Mrs. Hopkins seems to be an angel un- 


THE WHEELS BEGIN TO TUEIs 59 


awares/’ said Felicia, with enthusiastic misap- 
plication. 

It was the finding of the ancient sickle near 
the well that gave Ken the bright idea of cut- 
ting down the tall, dry grass for bedding. 

‘^Not that it ^s much of a weapon,’’ he said. 
‘‘Par less like a sickle than a dissipated saw, to 
quote. But the edge is rusted so thin that I 
believe it ’ll do the trick.” 

Kirk gathered the grass up into soft 
scratchy heaps as Ken mowed it, keeping at a 
respectful distance behind the swinging sickle. 
Ken began to whistle, then stopped to hear the 
marsh frogs, which were stiU chorusing their 
mad joy in the flight of winter. 

“I made up a pome about those thar toads,” 
Ken said, “last night after you ’d gone to sleep 
again.” 

Kirk leaped dangerously near the sickle. 

“You haven’t made me a pome for ages!” 
he cried. “Stop sickling and do it — quick!” 

“It ’s a grand one,” Ken said; “listen to 
this! 

^^Down in the marshes the sounds begin 
Of a far-away fairy violin, 

Faint and reedy and cobweb thin. 


60 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


“Cricket and marsh-frog and brown tree-toad, 

Sit in the sedgy grass by the road, 

Each at the door of his own abode; 

“Each with a fairy fiddle or flute 
Fashioned out of a briar root; 

The fairies join their notes, to boot. 

“Sitting all in a magic ring. 

They lift their voices and sing and sing, 

Because it is April, ^Spring! Spring!^” 

^‘That is a nice one!^^ Kirk agreed. ‘Ht 
sounds real. I donT know how yon can do it.’’ 

A faint clapping was heard from the direc- 
tion of the house, and turning, Ken saw his 
sister dropping him a curtsey at the door. 
‘‘That,” she said, “is a poem, not a pome — a 
perfectly good one.” 

“Go ’way!” shouted Ken. “You ’re a 
wicked interloper. And you don’t even know 
why Kirk and I write pomes about toads, so you 
don’t!” 

“I never could see,” Ken remarked that 
night, “why people are so keen about beds of 
roses. If you ask me, I should think they ’d 
be uncommon prickly and uncomfortable. Give 
me a bed of herbs — ^where love is, don’t you 
know?” 

“It wasn’t a bed of herbs,” Felicia con- 


THE WHEELS BEGIN TO THEN 61 


tended; was a dinner of them. This isn^t 
herbs, anyway. And think of the delectable 
smell of the bed of roses ! ^ ^ 

^^But every rose would have its thorn, Ken 
objected. ‘‘No, no, ‘herbs’ is preferable.” 

This argument was being held during the 
try-out of the grass beds in the living-room. 

^^See-saw, Margery Daw, 

She packed up her bed and lay upon straw,” 

sang Felicia. 

But the grass was an improvement. Grass 
below and Mrs. Hop’s quilts above, with the 
overcoats in reserve — ^the Sturgises considered 
themselves quite luxurious, after last night’s 
shift at sleep. 

“What care we if the beds don’t come?” 
Ken said. “We could live this way all summer. 
Let them perish untended in the trolley freight- 
house.” 

But when Kirk was asleep, the note of the 
conversation dropped. Ken and Felicia talked 
till late into the night, in earnest undertones, 
of ways and means and the needs of the old 
house. 

And slowly, slowly, all the wheels did begin to 


62 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


turn together. Some of the freight came, — 
notably the beds, — after a week of waiting. 
Ken and Hop carried them upstairs and set 
them up, with much toil. Ken chopped down 
two dead apple-trees, and filled the shed with 
substantial fuel. The Asquam Market would 
deliver out Winterbottom Road after May first. 
Trunks came, with old clothes, and Braille 
books and other books — and things that Felicia 
had not been able to leave behind at the last 
moment. Eventually, came a table, and the 
Sturgises set their posied plates upon it, and 
lighted their two candles stuck in saucers, and 
proclaimed themselves ready to entertain. 

“And,’’ thought Felicia, pausing at the 
kitchen door, “what a difference it does make I” 

Firelight and candle-light wrought together 
their gracious spell on the old room. The tin 
spoons gleamed like silver, the big brown crash 
towel that Ken had jokingly laid across the 
table looked quite like a runner. The light ran 
and glowed on the white-plastered ceiling and 
the heavy beams ; it flung a mellow aureole about 
Kirk, who was very carefully arranging three 
tumblers on the table. 

The two candle-flames swayed suddenly and 


THE WHEELS BEGIN TO THEN 63 


straightened, as Ken opened the outer door and 
came in. 

He, too, paused, looking at the little oasis in 
the dark, silent house. 

‘^We 're beginning," he said, ‘Ho make 
friends with the glum old place." 

There was much to be done. The rusty nails 
were pulled out, and others substituted in places 
where things could really be hung on them — 
notably in the kitchen, where they supported 
Felicia's pots and pans in neatly ordered rows. 
The burdocks disappeared, the shutters were 
persuaded not to squeak, the few pieces of fur- 
niture from home were settled in places where 
they would look largest. Yes, the house began 
to be friendly. The rooms were not, after all, 
so enormous as Felicia had thought. The fur-, 
niture made them look much smaller. At the 
Asquam Utility Emporium, Felicia purchased 
several yards of white cheese-cloth from which 
she fashioned curtains for the living-room win- 
dows. She also cleaned the windows them- 
selves, and Ken did a wondrous amount of 
scrubbing. 

Now, when fire and candle-light shone out in 
the living room, it looked indeed like a room in 


64 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


which to live — so thought the Sturgises, who 
asked little. 

“Come out here, Phil,’^ Ken whispered, 
plucking his sister by the sleeve, one evening 
just before supper. Mystified, she followed 
him out into the soft April twilight; he drew 
her away from the door a little and bade her 
look back. 

There were new green leaves on the little 
bush by the door-stone ; they gleamed startlingly 
light in the dusk. A new moon hung beside the 
stalwart white chimney — all the house was a 
mouse-colored shadow against the darkening 
sky. The living-room windows showed as or- 
ange squares cut cheerfully from the night. 
Through the filmy whiteness of the cheese-cloth 
curtains, could be seen the fire, the table spread 
for supper, the gallant candles, Kirk lying on 
the hearth, reading. 

“HoesnT it look like a place to live in — and 
to have a nice time inP^ Ken asked. 

“Oh,’^ Felicia said, “it almost does!^’ 


CHAPTER VI 


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE 

T he civilized-looking hedge had been long 
since investigated. The plot of land it en- 
closed — reached, for the Sturgises, through a 
breach in the hedge — ^was very different from 
the wild country which surrounded it. The 
place had once been a very beautiful garden, 
but years and neglect had made of it a half- 
formal wilderness, fascinating in its over-grown 
beauty and its hint of earlier glory. For Kirk, 
it was an enchanted land of close-pressing leafy 
alleys, pungent with the smell of box ; of brick- 
paved paths chanced on unexpectedly — followed 
cautiously to the rim of empty, stone-coped 
pools. He and Felicia, or he and Ken, went 
there when cookery or carpentry left an elder 
free. For when they had discovered that the 
tall old house, though by no means so neglected 
as the garden, was as empty, they ventured 
often into the place. Kirk invented endless 

65 


66 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


tales of enchanted castles, and peopled the still 
lawns and deserted alleys with every hero he 
had ever read or heard of. Who could tell? 
They might indeed lurk in the silent tangle — 
invisible to him only as all else was invisible. 
So he liked to think, and wandered, rapt, up and 
down the grass-grown paths of this enchanting 
play-ground. 

It was not far to the hedge — over the rail 
fence, across the stubbly meadow. Kirk had 
been privately amassing landmarks. He had 
enough, he considered, to venture forth alone 
to the garden of mystery. Felicia was in the 
kitchen — ^not eating bread and honey, but read- 
ing a cook-book and making think-lines in her 
forehead. Ken was in Asquam. Kirk stepped 
off the door-stone; sharp to the right, along 
the wall of the house, then a stretch in the 
open to the well, over the fence — and then 
nothing but certain queer stones and the bare 
feel of the faint path that had already been 
worn in the meadow. 

Kirk won the breach in the hedge and 
squeezed through. Then he was alone in the 
warm, green-smelling stillness of the trees. 
He found his way from the moss velvet under 


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE 67 


the pines to the paved path, and followed it, 
unhesitating, to the terrace before the house. 
On the shallow, sun-warmed steps he sat play- 
ing with fir-cones, fingering their scaly curves 
and sniffing their dry, brown fragrance. He 
swept a handful of them out of his lap and 
stood up, preparatory to questing further up 
the stone steps, to the house itself. But sud- 
denly he stood quite still, for he knew that he 
was not alone in the garden. He knew, also, 
that it was neither Ken nor Felicia who stood 
looking at him. Had one of the fairy-tale 
heroes materialized, after all, and slipped out 
of magic coverts to walk with him? Rather 
uncertainly, he said, ‘Hs somebody there?’’ 

His voice sounded very small in the outdoor 
silence. Suppose no one were there at all! 
How silly it would sound to be addressing a 
tree! There was a moment of stillness, and 
then a rather old voice said : 

‘‘Considering that you are looking straight 
at me, that seems a somewhat foolish question.” 

So there was some one ! Kirk said : 

“I can’t see you, because I can’t see any- 
thing. ’ ’ 

After a pause, the voice said, “Forgive me.” 


68 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


But indeed, at first glance, the grave shad- 
owed beauty of Kirk^s eyes did not betray their 
blindness. 

‘‘Are you one of the enchanted things, or a 
person ? ’ ^ Kirk inquired. 

“I might say, now, that I am enchanted,’’ 
said the voice, drily. 

“I don’t think I quite know what you mean,” 
Kirk said. “You sound hke a Puck of Pookas 
Hill sort of person. ’ ’ 

“Nothing so exciting. Though Oak and Ash 
and Thorn do grow in my garden.” 

“Ho they! I haven’t found them. I knew 
it was a different place, ever so different from 
anything near — different from the other side 
of the hedge.” 

“I am not so young as you,” said the voice, 
“to stand about hatless on an April afternoon. 
Let us come in and sit on either side of the 
chimney-corner. ’ ’ 

And a long, dry, firm hand took Kirk’s, and 
Kirk followed unhesitatingly where it led. 

The smoothness of old polished floors, a sense 
of height, absolute silence, a dry, aromatic 
smell — this was Kirk’s impression as he crossed 
the threshold, walking carefully and softly, that 


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE 69 


he might not break the spellbound stillness of 
the house. Then came the familiar crackle of 
an open fire, and Kirk was piloted into the de- 
licious cozy depths of a big chair beside the 
hearth. Creakings, as of another chair being 
pulled up, then a contented sigh, indicated that 
his host had sat down opposite him. 

^^May I now ask your nameT^ the voice in- 
quired. 

’m Kirkleigh Sturgis, at Applegate 
Farm,’’ said Kirk. 

. I s^pose you know, Miss Jean, 

That I’m Young Richard o’ Taunton Dean. . 

murmured the old gentleman. 

Kirk pricked up his ears instantly. ^^Phil 
sings that,” he said delightedly. ’m glad 
you know it. But you would. ’ ’ 

^‘Who ’d have thought you would know it?” 
said the voice. am fond of Young Richard, 
Is Phil your brother?” 

^^She ’s my sister — ^but I have a brother. 
He ’s sixteen, and he ’s almost as high as the 
doorways at Applegate Farm.” 

seem not to know where Applegate 
Farm is,” the old gentleman mused. 


70 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


‘Ht ’s quite next door to you/^ said Kirk. 
‘‘They call it the Baldwin place, really. But 
Ken happened to think that Baldwin a kind 
of apple, and there is an orchard and a gate, so 
we called it that.^’ 

“The old farm-house across the meadow 
There was a shade of perplexity in the voice. 
“You live there? 

“It ^s the most beautiful place in the world, 
said Kirk, with conviction, “except your gar- 
den.’’ 

“Beautiful — to you! Why?” 

“Oh, everything!” Kirk said, frowning, and 
trying to put into words what was really joy 
in life and spring and the love of his brother 
and sister. “Everything — the wind in the 
trees, and in the chimney at night, and the little 
toads that sing, — do you ever hear them? — and 
the fire, and, and — everything!^* 

“And youth,” said the old gentleman to him- 
self, “and an unconscious courage to surmount 
all obstacles. But perhaps, after all, the un- 
seen part of Applegate Farm is the more beau- 
tiful.” Aloud, he said: “Do you like to look 
at odd things? That is — I mean — ” 

Kirk helped him out. “ I do like to, ’ ’ he said. 


THE OTHEE SIDE OF THE HEDGE 71 


“I look at them with my fingers — ^but it ’s all 
the same.’^ 

Such things to look at ! They were deposited, 
one after the other, in Kirk^s eager hands, — 
the intricate carving of Japanese ivory, en- 
trancingly smooth — almost like something 
warm and living, after one had held it for a 
few adoring moments in carefnl hands. And 
there was a Burmese ebony elephant, with a 
ruby in his forehead. 

‘‘A ruby is red,^^ Kirk murmured; ^4t is like 
the fire. And the elephant is black. I see him 
very well. ’ ’ 

‘‘Once upon a time,’’ said the old gentleman, 
“a rajah rode on him — a rajah no bigger than 
your finger. And his turban was encrusted with 
the most precious of jewels, and his robe was 
stiff with gold. The elephant wore anklets of 
beaten silver, and they clinked as he walked.” 

Kirk’s face was intent, listening. The little 
ebony elephant stood motionless on his palm, 
dim in the firelight. 

“I hear them clinking,” he said, “and the 
people shouting — oh, so far away!” 

He put the treasure back into hia host’s hand, 
at last. 


72 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


‘H like, please, to look at you/* he said. 
‘Ht won’t hurt,” he added quickly, instantly 
conscious of some unspoken hesitancy. 

have no fear of that,” said the voice, 
‘^but you will find little worth the looking for.’' 

Kirk, nevertheless, stood beside the old gen- 
tleman’s chair, ready with a quick, light hand 
to visualize his friend’s features. 

‘‘My hair, if that will help you,” the voice 
told him, “is quite white, and my eyes are 
usually rather blue.” 

“Blue,” murmured Kirk, his fingers flitting 
down the fine lines of the old gentleman’s pro- 
file; “that ’s cool and nice, like the sea and the 
wind. Your face is like the ivory thing — 
smooth and — and carved. I think you really 
must be something different and rather en- 
chanted. ’ ’ 

But the old man had caught both Kirk’s 
hands and spread them out in his own. There 
was a moment of silence, and then he said : 

“Do you care for music, my child?” 

“I love Phil’s songs,” Kirk answered, puz- 
zled a little by a different note in the voice he 
was beginning to know. ‘ ‘ She sings and plays 
the accompaniments on the piano.” 


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE 73 


^‘Do you ever sing?'’ 

^‘Only when I 'm all alone." The color 
rushed for an instant to Kirk's cheeks, why, he 
could not have said. 

Without a word, the old gentleman, still hold- 
ing Kirk’s hands, pushed him gently into the 
chair he had himself been sitting in. There 
was a little time of stillness, filled only by the 
crack and rustle of the fire. Then, into the 
silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of 
Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid 
beauty of the last bars had scarcely died away, 
when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically 
exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth 
Prelude — climbing higher and higher in a 
mournful triumph of minor chords and sinking 
at last into the final solenm splendor of the clos- 
ing measures. The old gentleman turned on the 
piano-stool to find Kirk weeping passionately 
and silently into the cushions of the big chair. 

‘^Have I done more than I meant?" he ques- 
tioned himself, ‘‘or is it only the proof?" His 
hands on Kirk's quivering shoulders, he asked, 
“What is it?" 

Kirk sat up, ashamed, aud wondering why 
he had cried. 


74 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


was because it was so much more won- 
derful than anything that ever happened/^ he 
said unsteadily. ‘‘And I never can do it.’^ 
The musician almost shook him. 

“But you can/^ he said; “you must! How 
can you help yourself, with those hands ? Has 
no one guessed? How stupid all the world is 
He pulled Kirk suddenly to the piano, swept 
him abruptly into the wiry circle of his arm. 
“See,^^ he whispered; “oh, listen!’^ 

He spread Kirk^s fingers above the keyboard 
— ^brought them down on a fine chord of the 
Chopin prelude, and for one instant Kirk felt 
coursing through him a feeling inexplicable as 
it was exciting — as painful as it was glad. The 
next moment the chord died; the old man was 
again the gentle friend of the fireside. 

“I am stupid, he said, “and ill-advised. 
Let ’s have tea.’^ 

The tea came, magically — delicious cambric 
tea and cinnamon toast. Kirk and the old gen- 
tleman talked of the farm, and of Asquam, and 
other every-day subjects, till the spring dusk 
gathered at the window, and the musician 
started up. 


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE 75 


‘‘Your folk will be anxious,’’ he said. “We 
must be off. But you will come to me again, 
will you not ? ’ ’ 

Nothing could have kept Kirk away, and he 
said so. 

“And what ’s your name, please?” he asked. 
“I ’ve told you mine.” A silence made him 
add, “Of course, if you mind telling me — ” 

Silence still, and Kirk, inspired, said: 

“Phil was reading a book aloud to Mother, 
once, and it was partly about a man who made 
wonderful music and they called him ‘Maestro.’ 
Would you mind if I called you Maestro — just 
for something to call you, you know?” 

He feared, in the stillness, that he had hurt 
his friend’s feehngs, but the voice, when it 
next spoke, was kind and grave. 

“I am unworthy,” it said, “but I should like 
you to call me Maestro. Come — it is falling 
dusk. I ’ll go with you to the end of the 
meadow. ’ ’ 

And they went out together into the April 
twilight. 

Ken and Felicia were just beginning to be 
really anxious, when Kirk tumbled in at the 


76 


THE HAPPY VENTUBE 


living-room door, with a headlong tale of en- 
chanted hearthstones, ebony elephants, cinna- 
mon toast, music that had made him cry, and, 
most of all, of the benevolent, mysterious pres- 
ence who had wrought all this. Phil and Ken 
shook their heads, suggested that some supper 
would make Kirk feel better, and set a boundary 
limit of the orchard and meadow fence on his 
peregrinations. 

‘‘But I promised him I ’d come again, Kirk 
protested; “and I can find the way. I must, 
because he says I can make music like that — 
and he the only person who could show me 
how.’^ 

Felicia extracted a more coherent story as 
she sat on the edge of Kirk^s bed later that 
evening. She came downstairs sober and 
strangely elated, to electrify her brother by 
saying: 

“Something queer has happened to Kirk. 
He’s too excited, but he ’s simply shining. 
And do you suppose it can possibly be true that 
he has music in him? I mean real, extraordi- 
nary music, like — Beethoven or somebody.” 

But Ken roared so gleefully over the ridicu- 
lous idea of his small brother’s remotely re- 


THE OTHEE SIDE OF THE HEDGE 77 


sembling Beethoven, that Phil suddenly thought 
herself very silly, and lapsed into somewhat 
humiliated silence. 

It was some time before the cares of a house- 
hold permitted the Sturgises to do very much 
exploring. One of their first expeditions, how- 
ever, had been straight to the bay from the 
farm-house— a scramble through wild, long-de- 
serted pastures, an amazingly thick young alder 
grove, and finally out on the stony, salty water ^s 
edge. Here all was silver to the sea’s rim, 
where the bay met wider waters; in the oppo- 
site direction it narrowed till it was not more 
than a river, winding among salt flats and sur- 
den rocky points until it lost itself in a maze of 
blue among the distant uplands. The other 
shore was just beginning to be tenderly alight 
with April green, and Felicia caught her breath 
for very joy at the faint pink of distant maple 
boughs and the smell of spring and the sea. 
A song-sparrow dropped a sudden, clear throat- 
ful of notes, and Kirk, too, caught the rapture 
of the spring and flung wide his arms in impar- 
tial welcome. 

Ken had been poking down the shore and 


78 THE HAPPY VENTUKE 

came back now, evidently with something to 
say. 

‘‘There’s the queerest little inlet down 
there,” he said, “with a tide eddy that runs 
into it. And there ’s an old motor-boat hove 
way up on the rocks in there among the bushes.” 

“What about it?” Felicia asked. 

“I merely wished it were ours.” 

“Naturally it ’s some one else’s.” 

‘ ‘ He takes mighty poor care of it, then. The 
engine ’s all rusted up, and there ’s a hole 
stove in the bottom.” 

“Then we should n’t want it.” 

“It could be fixed,” Ken murmured; “easily. 
I examined it. ’ ’ 

He stared out at the misty bay’s end, think- 
ing, somehow, of the Celestine, which he had 
not forgotten in his anxieties as a householder. 

But even the joy of April on the bayside was 
shadowed when the mail came to Applegate 
Farm that day. The United States mail was 
represented, in the environs of Asquam, by a 
preposterously small wagon, — more like a longi- 
tudinal slice of a milk-cart than anything else, 
— drawn by two thin, rangy horses that seemed 
all out of proportion to their load. Their 


THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE 79 


rhythmic and leisurely trot jangled a loud but 
not unmusical bell which hung from some hid- 
den part of the wagon’s anatomy, and warned 
all dwellers on Rural Route No. 1 that the 
United States mail, ably piloted by Mr. Truman 
Hobart, was on its way. 

The jangling stopped at Applegate Farm, 
and Mr. Hobart delved into a soap-box in his 
cart and extracted the Sturgis mail, which he 
delivered into Kirk’s outstretched hand. Mr. 
Hobart waited, as usual, to watch, admire, and 
marvel at Kirk’s unhesitating progress to the 
house, and then he clucked to the horses and 
tinkled on his way. 

There was a penciled note from Mrs. Stur- 
gis, forwarded, as always, from Westover 
Street, where she, of course, thought her chil- 
dren were (they sent all their letters for her to 
Mr. Dodge, that they might bear the Bedford 
postmark — and very difficult letters those were 
to write!), a bill from the City Transfer Com- 
pany (carting: 1 table, etc., etc.), and a letter 
from Mr. Dodge. It was this letter which 
shadowed Applegate Farm and dug a new 
think-line in Ken’s young forehead. For Rocky 
Head Granite was, it seemed, by no means so 


80 


THE HAPPY YENTUEE 


firm as its name sounded. Mr. Dodge’s hopes 
for it were unfulfilled. It was very little in- 
deed that could now be wrung from it. The Fi- 
delity was for Mother — ^with a margin, scant 
enough, to eke out the young Sturgises ’ income. 
There was the bill for carting, other bills, daily 
expenses. Felicia, reading over Ken’s shoul- 
der, bit her lip. 

‘‘Come back to town, my dear boy,” wrote 
Mr. Dodge, “and I wDl try to get you some- 
thing to do. You are all welcome to my house 
and help as long as you may have need. ’ ’ 

It had been dawning more and more on Ken 
that he had been an idiot not to stay in town, 
where there was work to do. He had hated to 
prick Phil’s ideal bubble and cancel the lease 
on the farm, — for it was really she who had 
picked out the place, — but he was becoming 
aware that he should have done so. This latest 
turn in the Sturgis fortunes made it evident 
that something must be done to bring more 
money than the invested capital yielded. There 
was no work here ; unless perhaps he might hire 
out as a farm-hand, at small wages indeed. 
And he knew nothing of farm work. Neverthe- 
less, he and Felicia shook their heads at Mr. 


THE OTHEE SIDE OF THE HEDGE 81 


Dodge’s proposal. They sat at the table 
within the mellow ring of lamplight, after Kirk 
had gone to bed, and thrashed out their prob- 
lem, — pride fighting need and vanquishing 
judgment. It was a good letter that Kenelm 
sent Mr. Dodge, and the attorney shook his own 
head as he read it in his study, and said : 

‘^1 admire your principle, my boy — ^but oh, 
I pity your inexperience!” 


CHAPTER Vn 


A-MAYING 

T he City Transfer bill was paid; so were 
the other hills. Ken, on his way out from 
Asquam, stopped with a sudden light in his 
dogged face and turned back. He sought out 
the harbor-master, who was engaged in paint- 
ing a dory behind his shop. 

‘‘Wal, boy, want to get a fish-hook he quer- 
ied, squinting toward Ken with a preoccupied 
eye. (He sold hardware and fishing-tackle, as 
well as attending to the duties of his post.) 

Ken disclaimed any desire for the fish-hook, 
and said he wanted to ask about a boat. 

Ain’t got none for sale ner hire, just now,” 
the harbor-master rephed. 

Ken said, so he had heard, but that wasn’t 
it. And he told the man about the abandoned 
power-boat in the inlet. The harbor-master 
stood up straight and looked at Ken, at last. 
^^Wal, ding!” said he. ‘^That ’s Joe Pas- 
82 


A-MAYING 


83 


quale ’s boat, sure I a-standin’ here!’’ 

‘^Who,” said Ken, ‘4s Joe Pasqualef” 

“He is — or woz — a Portugee fisherman — ^lob- 
sterman, ruther. He got drownded in Febrerry 
— fell outen his boat, seems so, an’ we got him, 
but we never got the boat. Couldn’t figger 
wher’ she had got to. He was down harbor 
when ’t happent. Cur’ous tide-racks ’round 
here. ’ ’ 

“Whose is she, then?” Ken asked. “Any 
widows or orphans?” 

“Nary widder,” said the harbor-master, 
chewing tobacco reflectively. “No kin. Find- 
ers keepers. B ’longs to you, I reckon. Ain’t 
much good, be she?” 

“Hole stove in her,” Ken said. “The engine 
is all there, but I guess it ’ll need a good bit of 
tinkering at. ’ ’ 

“Ain’t wuth it,” said the harbor-master. 
“She ’s old as Methusaly, anyways. Keep her 
— she ’s salvage if ever there wuz. Might be 
able to git sunthin’ fer her enjine — scrap iron.” 

“Thanks,” said Ken; “I ’ll think it over.” 
And he ran nearly all the way to Applegate 
Farm. 


84 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


Kirk did not forget his promise to the 
Maestro. He found the old gentleman in the 
garden, sitting on a stone bench beside the 
empty fountain. 

knew that you would come,’^ he said. 
‘‘Do you know what day it isT^ 

Kirk did not, except that it was Saturday. 

“It is May-day,’’ said the Maestro, “and the 
spirits of the garden are abroad. We must 
keep our May together. Come — think I have 
not forgotten the way.” 

He took Kirk’s hand, and they walked down 
the grass path till the sweet closeness of a low 
pine covert wove a scented silence about them. 
The Maestro’s voice dropped. 

“It used to be here,” he said. “Try — ^the 
other side of the pine-tree. Ah, it has been so 
many, many years ! ’ ’ 

Kirk’s hand sought along the dry pine- 
needles; then, in a nook of the roots, what but 
a tiny dish, with sweetmeats, set out, and little 
cups of elder wine, and bread, and cottage 
cheese I The Maestro sat down beside Kirk on 
the pine-needles, and began to sing softly in a 
rather thin but very sweet voice. 



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A-MAYINa 


85 


^^Here come we a-maying, 

All in the wood so green; 

Oh, will ye not be staying? 

Oh, can ye not be seen? 

Before that ye be flitting. 

When the dew is in the east, 

We thank ye, as befltting. 

For the May and for the feast. 

Here come we a-maying. 

All in the wood so green, 

In fairy coverts straying 
A-for to seek our queen.” 

^‘One has to be courteous to them,’’ he added 
at the end, while Kirk sat rapt, very possibly 
seeing far more garden spirits than his friend 
had any idea of. 

myself,” the Maestro said, ‘‘do not very 
often come to the garden. It is too full, for 
me, of children no longer here. But the garden 
folk have not forgotten.” 

“When I ’m here,” murmured Kirk, sipping 
elder wine, “Applegate Farm and everything in 
the world seem miles and years away. Is there 
really a magic line at the hedge?” 

“If there is, you are the only one who has dis- 
covered it,” said the old gentleman, enigmati- 


86 


THE HAPPY VENTHEE 


cally. ‘‘Leave a sup of wine and a bit of bread 
for the Folk, and let us see if we cannot find 
some May-flowers.” 

They left the little pine room, — Kirk putting 
in the root hollow a generous tithe for the gar- 
den folk, — and went through the garden till 
the grass grew higher beneath their feet, and 
they began to climb a rough, sun-warmed hill- 
side, where dry leaves rustled and a sweet 
earthy smell arose. 

“Search here among the leaves,” the Maestro 
said, ‘ ‘ and see what you shall find. ’ ^ 

So Eark, in a dream of wonder, dropped to his 
knees, and felt among the loose leaves, in the 
sunshine. And there were tufts of smooth fo- 
liage, all hidden away, and there came from 
them 'a smell rapturously sweet — arbutus on a 
sunlit hill. Kirk pulled a sprig and sat drink- 
ing in the deliciousness of it, till the old gentle- 
man said: 

“We must have enough for a wreath, you 
know — a wreath for the queen.” 

“Who is our Queen of the May?” Kirk asked. 

“The most beautiful person you know.” 

“Felicia,” said Kirk, promptly. 

“Felicia,” mused the Maestro. “That is a 


A-MAYING 87 

beautiful name. Do you know wbat it means ? ’ ’ 

Kirk did not. 

‘‘It means happiness. Is it so?^’ 

“Yes/’ said Kirk; “Ken and I couldn’t be 
happy without her. She is happiness. ’ ’ 

“Kenneth is your brother?” 

“Kenelm. Does that mean something?” 

The old gentleman plucked May-flowers for 
a moment. “It means, if I remember rightly, 
‘a defender of his kindred.” It is a good 
Anglo-Saxon name.” 

“What does my name mean?” Kirk asked. 

The Maestro laughed. “Yours is not a given 
name,” he said. “It has no meaning. But — 
you mean much to me.” 

He caught Kirk suddenly in a breathless em- 
brace, from which he released him almost at 
once, with an apology. 

“Let us make the wreath,” he said. “See, 
I ’ll show you how.” 

He bound the first strands, and then guided 
Kirk’s hands in the next steps, till the child 
was fashioning the wreath alone. 

“ ‘My lovers an arbutus 
On the borders of Lene,^ 


88 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


sang the Maestro, in his gentle voice. ‘‘Listen, 
and I will tell you what you must say to Felicia 
when you crown her Queen of the May.’^ 

The falling sun found the wreath completed 
and the verse learned, and the two went hand 
in hand back through the shadowy garden. 

“Won’t you make music to-day T’ Kirk 
begged. 

“Not to-day,” said the old gentleman. 
“This day we go a-maying. But I am glad you 
do not forget the music.” 

“How could I!” said Kirk. At the hedge, 
he added: “I ’d like to put a bit of arbutus in 
your buttonhole, for your May. ’ ’ 

He held out a sprig in not quite the right di- 
rection, and the Maestro stepped forward and 
stooped to him, while Kirk’s fingers found the 
buttonhole. 

“Now the Folk can do me no harm,” smiled 
the old gentleman. “Good-by, my dear.’ 

Felicia was setting the table, with the candle- 
light about her hair. If Kirk could have seen 
her, he would indeed have thought her beauti- 
ful. He stood with one hand on the door-post, 
the other behind him. 


A-MAYING 


89 


he said. 

‘‘Here,’’ said Felicia. “Where have you 
been, honey?” 

He advanced to the middle of the room, and 
stopped. There was something so solemn and 
unchancy about him that his sister put a hand- 
ful of forks and spoons on the table and stood 
looking at him. Then he said, slowly: 

“I come a-maying through the wood, 

A-for to find my queen; 

She must be glad and she must be good. 

And the fairest ever seen. 

And now have I no further need 
To seek for loveliness; 

She standeth at my side indeed — 

Felicia — Happiness !” 

With which he produced the wreath of May- 
flowers, and, flinging himself suddenly upon her 
with a hug not specified in the rite, cast it upon 
her chestnut locks and twined himself joyfully 
around her. Phil, quite overcome, collapsed 
into the nearest chair, Kirk, May-flowers and 
all, and it was there that Ken found them, rap- 
turously embracing each other, the May Queen 
bewitchingly pretty with her wreath over one 


ear. 


90 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


did nT make it up/’ Kirk said, at supper. 
‘‘The Maestro did — or at least he said the Folk 
taught him one like it. I can’t remember the 
thanking one he sang before the feast. And 
Ken, he says your name ’s good Anglo-Saxon, 
and means ‘a defender of his kindred.’ ” 

“It does, does it?” said Ken. “You ’ll get so 
magicked over there some time that we ’ll never 
see you again; or else you ’ll come back cast 
into a spell, and there ’ll be no peace living 
with you.” 

“No, I won’t,” Kirk said. “And I like it. 
It makes things more interesting.” 

“I should think so/^ said Ken — secretly, per- 
haps, a shade envious of the Maestro’s ability. 

As he locked up Applegate Farm that night, 
he stopped for a moment at the door to look at 
the misty stars and listen to the wind in the 
orchard. 

“ ‘A defender of his kindred,’ ” he mur- 
mured. “H’m/” 

Hardly anything is more annoying than a 
mysterious elder brother. That Ken was tink- 
ering at the Flying Dutchman (as he had im- 
mediately called the power-boat, on account of 


A-MAYING 


91 


its ghostly associations) was evident to his 
brother and sister, but why he should be doing 
so, they could not fathom. 

‘‘We can’t afford to run around in her as a 
pleasure yacht, Felicia said. “Are you going 
to sell her?” 

“I am not,” Ken would say, maddeningly, 
jingling a handful of bolts in his pocket; “not 
I.” 

The patch in the Flying Dutchman was not 
such as a boat-builder would have made, but it 
was water-tight, and that was the main point. 
The motor required another week of coaxing; 
all Ken^s mechanical ingenuity was needed, and 
he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected 
and indignant. But when the last tinkering 
was over, when frantic spinnings of the fly- 
wheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and 
deep-chested gurgle from the engine, Ken 
clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on the 
rocks like a madman. 

He took the trial trip secretly — he did not 
intend to run the risk of sending Phil and Kirk 
to that portion of Davy Jones’ locker reserved 
for Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, 
charging through baybush and alder, till he 


92 THE HAPPY VENTUEE 

tumbled into Felicia on the doorstep of Apple- 
gate Farm. 

didnT want to tell you until I found out 
if she ’d work,’^ he gasped, having more en- 
thusiasm than breath. ^‘You might have been 
disappointed. But she ’ll go — and now I ’ll tell 
you what she and I are going to do!” 


CHAPTER Vin 


WORK 

O N a morning late in May, a train pulled 
into the Bayside station, which was the 
rail terminal for travelers to Asquam, and de- 
posited there a scattering of early summer folk 
and a pile of baggage. The Asquam trolley- 
car was not in, and would not be for some 
twenty minutes ; the passengers grouped them- 
selves at the station, half wharf, half platform, 
and stared languidly at the bay, the warehouse, 
and the empty track down which the Asquam 
car might eventually be expected to appear. It 
did not ; but there did appear a tall youth, who 
approached one of the groups of travelers with 
more show of confidence than he felt. He 
pulled off his new yachting-cap and addressed 
the man nearest him : 

‘‘Are you going to Asquam, sirT’ 

“I am, if the blamed trolley-car ever shows 
up.’^ 


93 


94 


THE HAPPY VENTUKE 


^‘Have you baggage?’^ 

Couple of trunks.’’ 

‘‘Are you sending them by the electric 
freight?’^ 

“No other way to send them,” said the man, 
gloomily. “I ’ve been here before. I ’ve 
fortified myself with a well-stocked bag, but I 
sha’n’t have a collar left before the baggage 
comes. As for my wife — ” 

“I can get your luggage to Asquam in a bit 
over an hour,” said the businesslike young gen- 
tleman. 

The somewhat bored group lifted interested 
heads. They, too, had trunks doomed to a mys- 
terious exile at the hands of the electric freight. 

“I ’m Sturgis,” said the youth, “of the Stur- 
gis Water Line. I have a large power-boat 
built for capacity, not looks. Your baggage 
will be safe in a store-room at the other end, ’ ’ 
— Captain Sturgis here produced a new and 
imposing key, — “and will be taken to your 
hotel or cottage by a reliable man with a team 
at the usual rate of transfer from the trolley. 
My charges are a little higher than the trolley 
rates, but you ’ll have your baggage before 
luncheon, instead of next week. ’ ’ 


WOEK 


95 


A murmuring arose in the group. 

‘'Let 's see your vessel, Cap,’’ said another 
man. 

Ken led the way to a boat skid at the foot 
of the wharf, and pointed out the Flying Dutch- 
man, unpainted, but very tidy, floating proudly 
beside the piles. 

“I have to charge by bulk rather than 
weight,” said the proprietor of the Sturgis 
Water Line, “and first come, first served.” 

“Have you a license!” asked a cautious one. 

Ken turned back a lapel and showed it, with 
the color rushing suddenly to his face. 

But the upshot of it was, that before the As- 
quam car — later than usual — arrived at Bay- 
side, the Flying Dutchman was chugging out 
into the bay, so loaded with trunks that Ken 
felt heartily for the Irishman, who, under some- 
what similar circumstances, said “ ’t was a 
merrcy the toide wasn’t six inches hoigher!” 
Out in the fairway, Ken crouched beside his 
engine, quite thankful to be alone with his boat 
and the harvest of trunks — so many more than 
he had hoped to have. For this was the first 
trip of the Sturgis Water Line, and its proprie- 
tor ’s heart, under the new license, had pounded 


96 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


quite agonizingly as he had approached his 
first clients. 

Down at Asquam, the room on the wharf 
under the harbor-master’s shop stood waiting 
to receive outgoing or incoming baggage; at 
the wharf, Hop would be drawn up with his 
old express-wagon. For Hop was the shore 
department of the Line, only too glad to trans- 
port luggage, and in so doing to score off Sim 
Eathbone, who had little by little taken Hop’s 
trade. He and Ken had arranged financial 
matters most amicably ; Ken was to keep all his 
profits. Hop was to charge his usual rates for 
transfer, but it was understood that Hopkins, 
and he alone, was shore agent of the Sturgis 
Water Line, and great was his joy and pride. 

Ken, on this first day, helped the old man 
load the trunks, rode with him to their various 
destinations, saw them received by unbelieving 
and jubilant owners, and then tore back to 
Applegate Farm, exultant and joyful. Hav- 
ing no breath for words, he laid before Felicia, 
who was making bread, four dollars and a half 
(six trunks at seventy-five cents apiece), 
clapped the yachting cap over Edrk’s head, and 
cut an ecstatic pigeon- wing on the kitchen floor. 


WORK 


97 


‘‘One trip!^’ gasped Phil, touching the money 
reverently with a doughy finger. “And you ^re 
going to make two round trips every day! 
That ^s eighteen dollars a day ! Oh, Ken, it ^s 
a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week! 
Why, we ^re — ^we ^re millionaires!’’ 

Ken had found his breath, and his reason. 

“What a little lightning calculator!” he said. 
“Don’t go so fast, Philly; why, your castle 
scrapes the clouds! This time of year I won’t 
carry any baggage on the up trips — just gaso- 
lene wasted; and there ’s the rent of the dock 
and the storeroom, — ^it is n ’t much, but it ’s 
quite a lot otf the profit, — and gas and oil, and 
lots of trips when I sha’n’t be in such luck. 
But I do think it ’s going to work — and pay, 
even if it ’s only fifteen or twenty dollars a 
week.” 

Whereupon Felicia called him a lamb, and 
kissed him, and he submitted. 

That night they had a cake. Eggs had been 
lavished on it to produce its delectable golden 
smoothness, and sugar had not been stinted. 

“It ’s a special occasion,” Felicia apolo- 
gized, “to celebrate the Sturgis Water Line 
and honor Captain Kenelm Sturgis — defender 


98 THE HAPPY VENTURE 

of his kindred,^’ she added mischievously. 

^^Cut it!’^ muttered Ken; but she took it to 
mean the cake, and handed him a delicious slice. 

‘‘All right,’’ said Ken. “Let ’s feast. But 
don’t be like the girl with the pitcher of milk on 
her head, Phil.” 

If you suppose that Miss Felicia Sturgis was 
lonely while her brother, the captain, was car- 
rying on his new watery profession, you are 
quite mistaken. She hadn’t time even to 
reflect whether she was lonely or not. She 
had no intention of letting Applegate Farm 
sink back to the untidy level of neglect in which 
she had found it, and its needs claimed much of 
her energy. She tried to find time in which to 
read a little, for she felt somewhat guilty about 
the unceremonious leave she had taken of her 
schooling. And there was cookery to practise, 
and stockings to mend, and, oh dear, such a 
number of things! 

But Kirk’s education filled the most im- 
portant place, to her, in the scheme of things 
at Asquam. If she had not been so young, and 
so ambitious, and so inexperienced, she might 
have faltered before the task she set herseK, 


WOKK 


99 


temporary though it might be. Long before 
the Sturgis Water Line had hung out its neat 
shingle at the harbor-master ^s wharf; before 
the Maestro and music had made a new interest 
in Kirk’s life; while Applegate Farm was still 
confusion — Felicia had attacked the Braille sys- 
tem with a courage as conscientious as it was 
unguided. She laughed now to think of how 
she had gone at the thing — ^not even studying 
out the alphabet first. In the candlelight, she 
had sat on the edge of her bed — there was no 
other furniture in the room — with one of Kirk’s 
books on her knee. Looking at the dots em- 
bossed on the paper conveyed nothing to her; 
she shut her eyes, and felt the page with a fore- 
finger which immediately seemed to her as 
large as a biscuit. Nothing but the dreadful 
darkness, and the discouraging little humps on 
the paper which would not even group them- 
selves under her fingers! Felicia had ended 
her first attempt at mastering Braille, in tears 
— but not altogether over her own failure. 

^ ‘ Oh, it must be hideous for him ! ’ ’ she quav- 
ered to the empty room ; ‘ ‘ simply hideous ! ’ ’ 

And she opened her eyes, thankful to see even 
the good candlelight on bare walls, and the 


100 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


green, star-hung slip of sky outside the win- 
dow. But somehow the seeing of it had made 
her cry again. 

Next day she had swallowed her pride and 
asked Kirk to explain to her a few of the mys- 
teries of the embossed letters. He was de- 
lighted, and picked the alphabet, here and there, 
from a page chosen at random in the big book. 
The dots slunk at once into quite sensibly or- 
dered ranks, and Felicia perceived a reason, an 
excuse for their existence. 

She learned half the alphabet in an hour, 
and picked out h and h and I joyfully from page 
after page. Three days later she was read- 
ing, ‘‘The cat can catch the mouse — as thrilled 
as a scientist would be to discover a new princi- 
ple of physics. Kirk was thrilled, also, and ap- 
plauded her vigorously. 

“But you 're looking at it, and that 's easier," 
he said. “And you 're gr owner-up than me." 

Felicia confessed that this was so. 

And now what a stern task-mistress she had 
become! She knew all the long words in the 
hardest lessons, and more too. There was no 
escaping school-time; it was as bad as Miss 
Bolton. Except that she was Felicia — and that 


WOEK 


101 


made all the difference in the world. Kirk 
labored for her as he had never done for Miss 
Bolton, who had been wont to say, ^‘If only he 
would work — The unfinished sentence al- 
ways implied untold possibilities for Kirk. 

But Felicia was not content that Kirk could 
read the hardest lessons now. They plunged 
into oral arithmetic and geography and history, 
to which last he would listen indefinitely while 
Phil read aloud. And Felicia, whose ambition 
was unbounded, — as, fortunately, his own 
was, — turned her attention to the question of 
writing. He could write Braille, with a punch 
and a Braille slate, — ^yes, indeed! — but who of 
the seeing world could read it when he had 
done 1 And he had no conception of our printed 
letters; they might as well have been Chinese 
symbols. He would, some day have a type- 
writer, of course, but that was impossible now. 
Phil, nothing daunted by statements that the 
blind never could write satisfactorily, sent for 
the simplest of the appliances which make it 
possible for them to write ordinary characters, 
and she and Kirk set to work with a will. 

On the whole, those were very happy morn- 
ings. For the schoolroom was in the orchard 


102 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


— the orchard, just beginning to sift scented 
petals over the lesson papers; beginning to be 
astir with the boom of bees, and the fluttering 
journeys of those busy householders, the robins. 
The high, soft grass made the most comfort- 
able of school benches ; an upturned box served 
excellently for a desk ; and here Kirk struggled 
with the elusive, unseen shapes of A. B. C — 
and conquered them! His first completed man- 
uscript was a letter to his mother, and Phil, 
looking at it, thought all the toil worth while. 
The letter had taken long, but Felicia had not 
helped him with it. 


DERD /^DTHCR ^ , 

I RM UPl r \ NG TH! 5 M 
YCELP P PDBIN 15 CIMBI 
NQ fOCnPhE BECRUEE HE M 
R5 TMPEE EBC!3 WHICH FI 
L FDUMD YE5TERDRN- I H 
DPE VDU RPEBETrCP DERP 
RND tRM CDHE BRCK 5D0M 
YOU9 Kl Pt< XXXXXXKXXXXX^ 


Mrs. Sturgis’s feelings, on reading this pro- 
duction, may be imagined. She wept a little, 
being still not herself, and found heart, for the 
first time, to notice that a robin was singing 
outside her own window. 


WOEK 


103 


There is no question but that Kirk’s days 
were really the busiest of the Sturgis family’s. 
For no sooner did th^ Three E’s loose their 
hold on him at noon, than the Maestro claimed 
him for music after lunch, three times a week. 
Bather tantalizing music, for he wasn’t to go 
near the piano yet. No, it was solfeggio, hor- 
rid dry scales to sing, and rhythm, and nota- 
tion. But all was repaid when the Maestro 
dropped to the piano-stool and filled a half-hour 
with music that made Kirk more than ever long 
to master the scales. And there was tea, al- 
ways, and slow, sun-bathed wanderings in the 
garden, hand in hand with the Maestro. 

He must hear, now, all about the Sturgis 
Water Line, and Ken’s yachting cap with the 
shiny visor, and how Kirk had taken the after- 
noon trip three times, and how — if the Maestro 
did n ’t know it already — the sound of water at 
the bow of a boat was one of the nicest noises 
there was. 

‘‘There are those who think so,” said the old 
gentleman. “Kirk, tell Ken not to let the sea 
gain a hold on him. He loves it, does he not?” 

“Yes,” said Kirk, aghast at the sudden bitter 
sorrow in the gentle voice. “Why?” 


104 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


‘‘The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she 
never releases. I know.^^ 

He stood among the gently falling blossoms 
of the big quince-tree by the terrace. Then he 
suddenly drew Kirk to him, and said: 

“I spoke of the garden being filled, to me, 
with the memory of children; did I not?^^ 

Kirk remembered that he had— on May-day. 

“A little boy and a little girl played here 
once,’’ said the Maestro, “when the pools were 
filled, and the garden paths were trim. The 
little girl died when she was a girl no longer. 
The boy loved the sea too well. He left the 
garden, to sail the seas in a ship — and I have 
never seen him since.” 

“Was he your little boy?” Kirk hardly dared 
ask it. 

“He was my little boy,” said the Maestro. 
“He left the garden in the moonlight, and ran 
away to the ships. He was sixteen. Tell Ken- 
elm not to love the sea too much.” 

“But Ken wouldn’t go away from Phil and 
me,” said Kirk; “I hnow he wouldn’t.” 

Kirk knew nothing of the call that the loom- 
ing gray sails of the Celestine had once made. 

“I thought,” said the Maestro, “that the 


WOEK 


105 


other boy would not leave his sister and his 
father.’’ He roused himself suddenly. ^‘Per- 
haps I do Ken injustice. I want to meet the 
gallant commander of the Flying Dutchman, 
It seems absurd that such close neighbors have 
not yet met. Bring him — and Felicia, when 
you come again. We ’ll drink to the success of 
the Sturgis Water Line. And don’t dare to 
tell me, next time, that you never heard of the 
scale of A flat major, my little scampi” 

Kirk, to whom the Maestro’s word was law, 
delivered his message very solemnly to Ken, 
who laughed. 

^^Not much fear of my cultivating too strong 
an atfection for Mud Ocean, as navigated by 
the Dutchman. If I had a chance to see real 
water and real ships, it might be different.” 

“But how horrid of his son never to let him 
know — poor old gentleman!” said Felicia, who 
was putting on her hat at the window. 

“Probably the old gentleman was so angry 
with him in the beginning that he did n ’t dare 
to, and now he thinks he ’s dead, ’ ’ Ken said. 

“Who thinks who ^s dead!” Phil asked. 
“You ’d never make a rhetorician.” 

“I should hope not!” said her brother. 


106 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


^‘Why, the sailor thinks his father dead. Get 
your hat, Kirk.’’ 

“We ’re going to an auction,’^ Felicia ex- 
plained. 

“A ^vandewV’ Ken corrected. “You and 
Phil are, that is, to buy shoes and ships and 
sealing-wax, and a chair for my room that 
won’t fall down when I sit in it, and crockery 
ware — and I guarantee you ’ll come home with 
a parlor organ and a wax fruit-piece under a 
glass case.” 

Phil scolfed and reproved him, and he de- 
parted, whistling “Rocked in the Cradle of the 
Deep,” lugubriously. His brother and sister 
caught up with him, and they all walked to- 
gether toward Asquam, Ken bound for his boat, 
and the others for the “vendu,” which was 
held at an old farm-house where Winterbottom 
Road joined Pickery Lane. 

Many ramshackle old wagons were already 
drawn up in the barn-yard and hitched to trees 
along the cart track. Their owners were 
grouped in the dooryard around the stoves and 
tables and boxes of “articles too numerous to 
mention,” chattering over the merits and flaws 
of mattresses and lamps, and sitting in the 


WOEK 


107 


chairs to find out whether or not they were 
comfortable. A bent old farmer with a chin- 
beard, stood chuckling over an ancient cradle 
that leaned against a wash-tub. 

‘‘There ’s one most ^s old ^s I be!’^ he said, 
addressing the world at large; “fust thing I 
’member, I crawled outen one like thet!” 

The auctioneer was selling farm tools and 
stock at the other side of the house, and most 
of the men-folks were congregated there — tall, 
solemn people, still wearing winter mufflers — 
soberly chewing tobacco and comparing notes 
on the tools. Felicia and Kirk, though they 
would have liked well enough to own the old 
white horse and the Jersey heifers, felt them- 
selves unable to afford live stock, and stayed in 
the dooryard. Among the furniture so merci- 
lessly dragged from its familiar surroundings 
to stand on the trampled grass, was a little, 
square, weathered thing, which Felicia at first 
failed to recognize as the inevitable melodeon. 
It lacked all the plush and gewgaws of the par- 
lor organ of commerce; such a modest, tiny 
gray box might easily have passed for a kitch- 
en chest. 

Felicia pushed back the cover, and, pressing 


108 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


a pedal with one foot, gave forth the chords 
of her favorite, ‘^How should I your true love 
knowP^ The organ had a rather sweet old 
tone, unlike the nasal and somewhat sancti- 
monious drone of most melodeons, and Felicia, 
hungry for the piano that had not been brought 
to Asquam, almost wushed she could buy it. 
She remembered Ken^s prophecy — ‘^you ^11 
come home with a melodeon’’ — and turned 
away, her cheeks all the pinker when she found 
the frankly interested eyes of several bumpkins 
fixed upon her. But Kirk was not so ready to 
leave the instrument. 

‘^Why donT we get that, PhilP’ he begged. 
^^We must have it; donT you think soP^ 

‘Ht will go for much more than we can af- 
ford,’^ said Felicia. ‘‘And you have the Maes- 
tro ^s piano. Listen ! They ^re beginning to 
sell the things around here.^’ 

“But you haven’t the Maestro’s piano!” 
Kirk protested, clinging very tightly to her 
hand in the midst of all this strange^ pushing 
crowd. 

The people were gathering at the sunny 
side of the house; the auctioneer, at the win- 
dow, was selling pots and candles and prun- 


WOEK 


109 


ing-shears and kitchen chairs. Felicia felt 
somehow curiously aloof, and almost like an in- 
truder, in this crowd of people, all of whom 
had known each other for long years in As- 
quam. They shouted pleasantries across in- 
tervening heads, and roared as one when some- 
body called ^Lisha’^ bought an ancient stove- 
pipe hat for five cents and clapped it on his 
head, adding at least a foot to his already gaunt 
and towering height. She felt, too, an odd 
sense of pathos at the sight of all these little 
possessions — some of them heirlooms — ^being 
pulled from the old homestead and flaunted 
before the world. She did not like to see two 
or three old women fingering the fine quilts and 
saying they ’d be a good bargain, for Maria 
Troop made every stitch on 'em herself, and 
she alius was one to have lastin' things." Poor 
little Mrs. Troop was there, tightly buttoned up 
in her store clothes," running hither and 
thither, and protesting to the auctioneer that 
the ‘^sofy" was worth ‘^‘twicet as much's Sim 
Rathbone give for 't." 

A fearful crash of crockery within brought 
her hand to her heart, and a voice from the 
crowd commented jocularly, ^‘Huh! Breakin' 


110 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


Tip housekeepinM’’ Even Mrs. Troop smiled 
wryly, and the crowd gnffawed. 

‘‘Now here,’^ bellowed the auctioneer, “is 
a very fine article sech as you don’t often see 
in these days. A melodeon, everybody, a par- 
lor organ, in size, shape, and appearance very 
unusual, so to say.’^ 

“Ain’t it homely!” a female voice remarked 
during the stout auctioneer’s pause for breath. 

“Not being a musician, ladies and gents, I 
ain’t qualified to let you hear the tones of this 
instrument, hut — I am sure it will be an orna- 
ment to any home and a source of enjoyment 
to both old and young. Now — what’ll you give 
me for this fine old organV^ 

“Seventy-five cents,” a deep voice mur- 
mured. 

“Got your money with you, Watson?” the 
auctioneer inquired bitingly. “I am ashamed 
of this offer, folks, but nevertheless, I am of- 
fered seventy-five cents — seventy-five cents, for 
this fine old instrument. Now who ’ll — ” 

The melodeon climbed to two dollars, with 
comparative rapidity. The bidders were prin- 
cipally men, whose wives, had they been pres- 
ent, would probably have discouraged the bid- 


WOEK 


111 


ding, on the score that it was impossible to 
have that thing in the house, when Jenny ’s 
had veneer candle-stands and plush pedals. 
Felicia was just beginning to wonder whether 
entering into the ring would push the melodeon 
too high, and the auctioneer was impatiently 
tapping his heel on the soap-box platform, when 
a clear and deliberate voice remarked: 

‘‘Two dollars and ten cents.” 

Several heads were turned to see the speaker, 
and women peeped over their husbands’ shoul- 
ders to look. They saw a child in green knick- 
erbockers and a gray jersey, his hand in that of 
a surprised young girl, and his determined face 
and oddly tranquil eyes turned purposefully to 
the auctioneer. 

“Make it a quarter,” said a man lounging 
against the leader-pipe. 

“Two and a quarter,” said the auctioneer. 
“I ’m bid two dollars and a quarter for the 
organ. ’ ’ 

“Two dollars and fifty cents,” said the 
young bidder, a shade of excitement now be- 
traying itself in his voice. The girl opened 
her mouth, perhaps to protest, and then closed 
it again. 


112 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


^ * Two-fifty ! ^ ’ bawled the auctioneer. ‘ ‘ Two- 
fifty? Going- — any more? Going — going — 
he brought his big hands together with a slap, 
**Gone! at two dollars and fifty cents, to — 
who ’s the party, Ben?’^ 

Ben, harassed, pencil in mouth, professed 
ignorance. 

^‘Kirkleigh Sturgis,’’ said the owner of the 
musical instrument, ‘‘Winterbottom Road.” 

‘‘Mister Sturgis,” said the auctioneer, while 
Ben scribbled. “Step right up, young man. 
Give Ben your money and put your planner in 
your pocket. Now folks, the next article — ” 

Kirk and Felicia, not to speak of the organ, 
two chairs, a wash-basin, a frying-pan, two 
boxes of candles, a good mop, and a pot of 
soft soap, were all carted home by the invalu- 
able Hop. They met Ken, in from his second 
trip, in the middle of Winterbottom Hill, and 
they gave him a lift. 

“Oh, if you knew what you ’re sitting on!” 
Phil chuckled. 

“Good heavens! Will it go off?” cried Ken, 
squirming around to look down at his seat. “I 
thought it was a chist, or something.” 

“It ’s — a melodeon!” Phil said weakly. 


WOEK 


113 


‘ ^ A melodeon ! Oh, ye gods and little fishes ! ^ ^ 
shouted Ken. ^^Oh, my prophetic soul!^’ and 
he laughed all the way to Applegate Farm. 

But while Felicia was clattering pans in the 
kitchen, and Ken went whistling through the 
orchard twilight to the well, the purchaser of 
the organ felt his way to it, not quite sure, 
yet, of its place by the window. He sat down 
in front of it, and pressed the stiff old pedals. 
His careful fingers found a chord, and the yel- 
low notes responded with their sweet, thin 
cadence — the vox humana stop was out. He 
pulled, by chance, the diapason, and filled the 
room with deep, shaken notes. Half fright- 
ened at the magic possibilities, he slipped from 
the chair and ran out into the young May night, 
to whisper to it something of the love and won- 
der that the Maestro ^s music was stirring in 
him. Here in the twilit dooryard he was found 
by his brother, who gave him the hand unoc- 
cupied by the bucket and led him in to the good, 
wholesome commonplaces of hearth-fire and 
supper and the jolliest of jokes and laughter. 


CHAPTER IX 


FAME COMES COURTING 

T first, each day in the old house had been 



an adventure. That could not last, for 
even the most exciting surroundings become 
familiar when they are lived in day after day. 
Still, there are people who think every dawn 
the beginning of a new adventure, and Felicia, 
in spite of pots and pans, was rather of this 
opinion. 

It was, for instance, a real epoch in her life 
when the great old rose-bush below the living- 
room windows budded and then bloomed. She 
had watched it anxiously for weeks, and tended 
it as it had not been tended for many years. 
It bloomed suddenly and beautifully, — ^‘out of 
sheer gratitude,’’ Ken said, — and massed a 
great mound of delicate color against the 
silver shingles of the west wall. It bore the 
sweet, small, old-fashioned roses that flower a 
tender pink and fade gracefully to bluish 


114 


FAME COMES COURTING 


115 


white. Felicia gathered a bunch of them for 
the Maestro, who had bidden the three to come 
for tea. Neither Ken nor Felicia had, as yet, 
met Kirk’s mysterious friend, and were still 
half inclined to think him a creature of their 
brother’s imagination. 

And, indeed, when they met him, standing 
beside the laden tea-table on the terrace, they 
thought him scarcely more of an actuality, so 
utterly in keeping was he with the dreaming 
garden and the still house. Felicia, who had 
not quite realized the depth of friendship 
which had grown between this old gentleman 
and her small brother, noted with the famihar 
strangeness of a dream the proprietary action 
with which the Maestro drew Eark to him, and 
Kirk’s instant and unconscious response. 
These were old and dear friends; Ken and 
Felicia had for a moment the curious sensa- 
tion of being intruders in a forgotten comer 
of enchanted land, into which the likeness of 
their own Kirk had somehow strayed. But the 
feeling passed quickly. The Maestro behind 
the silver urn was a human being, after all, 
talking of the Sturgis Water Line — a most de- 
lightful human being, full of kindliness and 


116 


THE HAPPY VENTHKE 


humor. Kirk was really their own, too. He 
leaned beside Felicia ^s chair, stirring his tea, 
and she slipped an arm about him, just to es- 
tablish her right of possession. 

The talk ran on the awakening of Applegate 
Farm, the rose-bush, lessons in the orchard, 
many details of the management of this new 
and exciting life, which the Maestro ^s quiet 
questioning drew unconsciously from the eager 
Sturgises. 

‘‘We Ve been talking about nothing but our- 
selves, I 'm afraid,’^ Felicia said at last, with 
pink cheeks. She rose to go, but Kirk pulled 
her sleeve. No afternoon at the Maestro’s 
house was complete for him without music, it 
seemed, and it was to the piano that the Maestro 
must go ; please, please ! So, through the 
French windows that opened to the terrace, 
they entered the room which Kirk had never 
been able to describe, because he had never seen 
it. Ken and Phil saw it now — high and dim 
and quiet, with book-lined walls, and the shapes 
of curious and beautiful things gleaming here 
and there from carved cabinet and table. 

The Maestro ^at down at the piano, thought 
for a moment, and then, smiling, rippled into 


FAME COMES COUBTINO 117 


the first bars of a little air which none of his 
listeners had ever before heard. Eerily it 
tripped and chimed and lilted to its close, and 
the Maestro swnng about and faced them, smil- 
ing still, quizzically. 

‘ ‘ What does it mean T ^ he asked. ‘ ‘ I am very 
curious to know. Is it merely a tune — or does 
it remind you of something 

The Sturgises pondered. ^^It ^s like spring,’^ 
Felicia said; ^4ike little leaves fluttering.^’ 
‘‘Yes, it is,” Ken agreed. “It ’s a song of 
some (Sort, I think — that is, it ought to have 
words. And it ’s spring, all right. It ’s like 
— it ’s like — ” 

“It ’s like those toads!” Kirk said suddenly. 
“Don’t you know? Like little bells and flutes, 
far otf — and fairies. ’ ’ 

The Maestro clapped his hands. 

“I have not forgotten how, then,” he said. 
“It has words, Kenelm. I hope — I hope that 
you will not be very angry with me.” 

He played the first twinkling measures again, 
and then began to sing: 

^‘Down in the marshes the sounds begin 
Of a far-away fairy violin, 

Faint and reedy and cobweb thin.” 


118 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


Cobweb thin, the accompaniment took up the 
plaintive chirping till the Maestro sang the 
second verse. 

“I say,^’ said Ken, bolt upright in his chair. 
say!^^ 

Are you angry?’’ asked the Maestro. He 
flung out his hands in a pleading gesture. 
‘‘Will he forgive me, Kirk?” 

“Why, why — it ’s beautiful, sir!” Ken stam- 
mered. “It ’s only — that I don’t see how you 
ever got hold of those words. It was just a 
thing I made up to amuse Kirk. He made me 
say it to him over and over, about fifty-nine 
times, I should say, till I ’m sure I was per- 
fectly sick of it. ’ ’ 

“Having heard it fifty-nine times,” said the 
old gentleman, “he was able to repeat it to me, 
and I took the opportunity to write it off on 
a bit of paper, because, my dear boy, I liked it. ’ ’ 

“A lovely, scrumptious tune,” said Kirk. 
“It makes it nicer than ever.” 

“What do you say,” siaid the Maestro, “to 
our giving this unsurpassed song to the world 
at large?” 

“Do you mean having it printed?” Felicia 
asked quickly. “Oh, what fun!” 


FAME COMES COUETING 


119 


She beamed at Ken, who looked happy and 
uncomfortable at once. 

’m afraid I ’m too unknown, sir,’^ he said. 
‘‘I — never thought of such a thing. 

‘‘Perhaps,^’ said the Maestro, with a smile, 
^‘the composer is sufficiently well known to 
make up for the author ^s lack of fame. ’ ^ 

Ken^s face grew a shade redder. ^^Of 
course, he stammered. ^^Oh, I beg your par- 
don. ’ ’ 

‘‘Then the permission is granted P’ 

Quite naturally, Ken granted it, with what 
he thought ill-worded thanks, and the Stur- 
gises walked home across the meadow without 
knowing on what they trod. 

“A real author!’’ Felicia said. “I told you 
that was n’t a pome, when I first heard it.” 

But Ken chose to be severe and modest, and 
frowned on the “Toad Song” — as it was fa- 
miliarly called — for a topic of conversation. 
And as weeks slid by, the whole affair was 
almost forgotten at Applegate Farm. 

Those were weeks during which the Maes- 
tro, from the shadowy hero of Kirk’s tales, 
became a very real part of this new life that 
was slowly settling to a familiar and loved ex- 


120 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


istence. The quiet garden and the still old 
house became as well known to Ken and Fe- 
licia as to their brother, and, indeed, the Maes- 
tro might often have been seen in the living- 
room at Applegate Farm, listening to Kirk^s 
proud performance on the melodeon, and eat- 
ing one of Philos cookies. 


CHAPTEE X 


VENTUBES AND ADVENTUBES 

K en had not much time for these visits. 

The Sturgis Water Line was so popular 
that he could not even find a spare day or two 
in which to haul out the Dutchman and give 
her the ^^lick of paint she needed. He had 
feared that, with the filling of the cottages at 
the beginning of the season, business would 
fall off, hut so many weekly visitors came and 
went at the hotels that the Dutchman rarely 
made a trip entirely empty, and quite often she 
was forced to leave, till the next time, a little 
heap of luggage which even her wide cockpit 
could not carry. Sometimes Ken made an extra 
trip, which brought him back to the pier at As- 
quam as the first twilight was gathering. 

He had just come in from such an extra,’’ 
one day during the busy Fourth of July week- 
end, and climbed out upon the wharf when the 
121 


122 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


shadows of the pile-heads stretched darkly up 
the streetway. Hop fastened the tail-board of 
his wagon behind the last trunk, rubbed his 
hands, and said: 

‘‘Wife sent ye down some pie. Thought ye 
desarved it a Ter runnin’ up ^n’ down all day.’’ 

He produced the pie, wrapped up in a paper, 
from under the seat, and presented it to Ken 
with a flourish and a shuffle that were alto- 
gether characteristic. Supper was waiting at 
Applegate Farm, Ken knew, but the pie — 
which was a cherry one, drippy and delectable 
— was not to be resisted, after long hours on 
the water. He bit into it heartily as he left 
Asquam and swung into Pickery Lane. 

He hurried along, still wrapped in the at- 
mosphere which had surrounded him all day. 
He felt still the lift of the boat over the short 
swell, he smelled the pleasant combination of 
salt, and gasolene, and the whiff of the hay- 
fields, and his eyes still kept the glare and the 
blue, and the swinging dark shape of the 
Dutchman's bows as he headed her down the 
bay. Just before he reached Winterbottom 
Eoad, he saw, rather vaguely through the twi- 
light, the figures of a man and a small boy. 


VENTURES AND ADVENTURES 123 


coming toward him. They had, apparently, 
seen him, also, for the man walked more quickly 
for a step or two, then stopped altogether, and 
finally turned sharply off the road and swung 
the child over a stone wall, with a quick remark 
which Ken did not hear. 

He did hear, however, the child’s reply, for 
it was in a clear and well-known voice. It said : 

don’t think this can he the way. I didn’t 
come over a wall.” 

The remainder of the cherry pie dropped to 
the dust of the Winterbottom Road. Not more 
than three gigantic leaps brought Ken to the 
spot ; he vaulted the wall with a clean and mag- 
nificent spring that would have won him fame 
at school. The man was a stranger, as Ken 
had thought — an untidy and unshaven stranger. 
He was not quite so tall as Ken, who seized him 
by the arm. 

^^May I ask where you’re going?” roared 
Ken, at which the small boy leaped rapturously, 
fastened himself to Ken’s coat-tail, and cried: 

‘‘Oh, I’m so glad it’s you I I started to 
come and meet you, and I walked farther than 
I meant, and I got lost, and I met this person, 
and he said he ’d take me home, and — ” 


124 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


^‘Shut up!^^ said Ken. And let go of meV^ 
at which Kirk, thoroughly shocked, dropped 
back as though he could not believe his ears. 

was takin’ the kid home,^’ muttered the 
man, ‘‘just like he says.’^ 

“Why were you going in exactly the oppo- 
site direction, thenP’ Ken demanded. 

As he leaped abreast of the man, who was 
trying to back away, the day’s receipts of the 
Sturgis Water Line jingled loudly in his 
trousers pocket. The stranger, whose first 
plan had been so rudely interfered with, de- 
termined on the instant not to leave altogether 
empty-handed, and planted a forcible and un- 
expected blow on the side of Ken’s head. Ken 
staggered and went down, and Kirk, who had 
been standing dangerously near all this activ- 
ity, went down on top of him. It so happened 
that he sprawled exactly on top of the trousers 
pocket aforesaid, and when the man sought, 
with hasty and ungentle hands, to remove him 
from it, Kirk launched a sudden and violent 
kick, in the hope of its doing some execution. 

Kirk’s boots were stout, and himself horri- 
fied and indignant ; his heel caught the stranger 
with full force in the temple, and the man, too. 


VENTUEES AND ADVENTUEES 125 


was added to the prostrate figures in the dark- 
ening field. Two of them did not long remain 
prostrate. Ken lurched, bewildered, to his feet, 
and, seeing his foe stretched by some miracle 
upon the ground, he bundled Kirk over the wall 
and followed giddily. Stumbling down the 
shadowy road, with Kirk^s hand in his, he said: 

‘^That was good luck. I must have given the 
gentleman a crack as he got me.’^ 

‘‘He was trying to steal your money, I 
think, Kirk said. “I was lying on top of you, 
so I kicked him, hard.^^ 

“Oh, that was it, was it?^^ Ken exclaimed. 
“Well, very neat work, even if not sporting. 
By the way, excuse me for speaking to you the 
way I did, but it wasnT any time to have a 
talk. You precious, trusting little idiot, donT 
you know better than to go off with the first 
person who comes along T’ 

“He said he ’d take me home,’^ Kirk said 
plaintively. “I told him where it was.^^ 

“You Ve got to learn,” said his brother, 
stalking grimly on in the dusk, “that every- 
body in the world isn’t so kind and honest as 
the people you Ve met so far. That individual 
was going to take you goodness knows where, 


126 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


arid not let us have you back till we ’d paid 
him all the money we have in the world. If 
I had n T come along just as that particular mo- 
ment, that ^s what would have happened. 

Kirk sniffed, but Ken went on relentlessly; 

‘‘What were you doing outside the gate, any- 
way? You ^re not allowed there. I don’t like 
your going to the Maestro’s, even, but at least 
it ’s a safe path. There are automobiles on 
Winterbottom Eoad, and they suppose that you 
can see ’em and get out of their way. I ’m 
afraid we ’ll have to say that you can’t leave 
the house without Phil or me.” 

Ken was over-wrought, and forgot that his 
brother probably was, also. Kirk wept pas- 
sionately at last, and Ken, who could never bear 
to see his tears, crouched penitent in the gloom 
of the road, to dry his eyes and murmur tender 
apologies. At the gate of the farm, Ken paused 
suddenly, and then said: 

“Let ’s not say anything about all this to 
Phil; she ’d just be worried and upset. What 
do you say?” 

“Don’t let ’s,” Kirk agreed. They shook 
hands solemnly, and then turned to the lighted 
windows of Applegate Farm. 


VENTUEES AND ADVENTUEES 127 


But it would not have been so easy to keep 
the unpleasant adventure secret, or conceal 
from Felicia that something had been wrong, 
if she herself had not been so obviously cherish- 
ing a surprise. She had thought that Kirk was 
waiting at the gate for Ken, and so had been 
spared any anxiety on that score. She could 
hardly wait for Ken to take off his sweater and 
wash his hands. Supper was on the table, and 
it was to something which lay beside her elder 
brother ’s plate that her dancing eyes kept turn- 
ing. 

Ken, weary with good cause, siat down with 
a sigh, and then leaned forward as if an elec- 
tric button had been touched somewhere about 
his person. 

^ ‘ What — ^well, by Jiminy 1 ^ ^ shouted Ken. ‘ ^ I 
never believed it, never!’’ 

‘‘It’s real,” Phil said excitedly; “it looks 
just like a real one.” 

‘ ‘ What ?' ’ Kirk asked wildly ; ‘ ‘ tell me what 1 ’ ’ 

Ken lifted the crisp new sheet of music and 
stared at it, and then read aloud the words 
on the cover. 

Fairy Music," it said — and his name was 
there, and the Maestro’s, and ‘‘net price, 60c” 


128 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


^4ike a real one,’^ indeed. And within were 
flights of printed notes, and the words of the 
‘‘Toad Pome’’ in cold black and white. And 
above them, in small italics, Dedicated to 
Kirkleigh Sturgis,** 

“Just like Beethoven’s things to the Count- 
ess von Something, don’t you know!” Phil mur- 
mured, awed and rapturous. 

When Ken laid the pages down at last, Kirk 
seized on them, and though they could mean 
nothing to him but the cool smoothness of paper 
and the smell of newly dried printers’ ink, he 
seemed to get an immense satisfaction from 
them. 

But the surprise was not yet over. Beneath 
the copy of the song lay a much smaller bit 
of paper, long, narrow, and greenish. It bore 
such words as Central Trust Company, and 
Fay to the Order of Kenelm Sturgis, The sum 
which was to be paid him was such as to make 
Ken put a hand dramatically to his forehead. 
He then produced from his pocket the money 
which had so nearly gone off in the pocket of 
the stranger, and stacked it neatly beside his 
plate. 

“One day’s bone labor for man and boat,” 


VENTUEES AND ADVENTUEES 129 


he said. ‘‘Less than a quarter as much as what 
I get for fifteen minutes ’ scribbling. ’ ’ 

“And the Maestro says there ’ll be more,” 
Felicia put in; “because there are royalties, 
which I don ’t understand. ’ ’ 

“But,” said Ken, pursuing his line of 
thought, “I can depend on the Dutchman and 
my good right arm, and I canH depend on the 
Pure Flame of Inspiration, or whatever it’s 
called, so me thinks the Sturgis Water Line will 
make its first trip at 8 :30 promptly to-morrow 
morning, as advertised. All the same,” he 
added jubilantly, “what a tremendous lark it is, 
to be sure!” 

And he gave way suddenly to an outburst 
of the sheer delight which he really felt, and, 
leaping up, caught Felicia with one hand and 
Kirk with the other. The three executed for 
a few moments a hilarious ring-around-a-rosy 
about the table, till Felicia finally protested at 
the congealing state of the supper, and they all 
dropped breathless to their seats and fell to 
without more words. 

After supper, Felicia played the Toad Song 
on the melodeon until it ran in all their heads, 
and Kirk could be heard caroling it, upstairs. 


130 THE HAPPY VENTURE 

when he was supposed to be settling himself to 
sleep. 

It was not till Ken was bending over the 
lamp, preparatory to blowing it out, that Phil 
noticed the bruise above his eye. 

‘‘How did you get that, lambU’ she said, 
touching Ken’s forehead, illuminated by the 
lamp’s glow. 

Ken blew out the flame swiftly, and faced 
his sister in a room lit only by the faint, dusky 
reflection of moonlight without. 

“Oh, I whacked up against something this 
afternoon,” he said. “I ’ll put some witch- 
hazel on it, if you like.” 

“I ’m so awfully glad about the Toad Song,” 
whispered Felicia, slipping her hand within his 
arm. “Good old brother!” 

“Good old Maestro,” said Ken; and they 
went arm in arm up the steep stairs. 

Ken lighted his sister’s candle for her, and 
took his own into the room he shared with 
Kirk. There was no fear of candle-light wak- 
ing Kirk. He was very sound asleep, with the 
covers thrown about, and Ken stood looking 
at him for some time, with the candle held 
above his brother’s tranquil face. 


VENTURES AND ADVENTURES 131 


wonder where he have been sleeping 
to-night if I had nT come along just about when 
I didr^ mused Ken. “The innocent little 
youngster — he never supposed for a minute that 
the rapscallion would do anything but take him 
home. How ^s he ever going to learn all the 
ways of the wicked world? And what ever 
possessed him to shoot olf the Toad Pome to 
the Maestro 

Ken put the candle on the bureau and undid 
his necktie. 

“The blessed little goose 1^^ he added affec- 
tionately. 

There is nothing like interesting work to 
make time pass incredibly quickly. For the 
Sturgises were interested in all their labors, 
even the ‘ ‘ chores ^ ^ of Applegate Farm. It goes 
without saying that Kirk^s music — which was 
the hardest sort of work — absorbed him com- 
pletely; he lived in a new world. So, almost 
before they could believe it, September came, 
tilling the distance with tranquil haze, and mel- 
lowing the flats to dim orange, threaded with 
the keen blue inlets of the bay. Asters began 
to open lavender stars at the door-stone of Ap- 


132 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


plegate Farm ; tall rich milkweed pressed dusty 
flower-bunches against the fence, and the 
sumach brandished smoldering pyramids of fire 
along the roadsides. 

Ken came home late, whistling, up from 
Asquam. Trade for the Sturgis Water Line 
was heavy again just now; the hotels and 
cottages were being vacated every day, and 
more baggage than the Dutchman could carry 
lay piled in the Sturgis ‘‘warehouse^’ till next 
morning. Ken^s whistle stopped as he swung 
into Winterbottom Road and began to climb the 
hill. Just at the crest of the rise, where the 
pale strip of road met the twilight of the sky, 
the full moon hung, a golden disc scarcely more 
luminous than the sky around it. As he moved 
up the hill, it moved also, till it floated clear of 
the dark juniper-trees and stood high above 
them. .Crickets were taking up their minor 
creaking, and there was no other sound. 

Through the half dusk, the white chimneys 
of Applegate Farm showed vaguely, with smoke 
rising so lazily that it seemed almost a station- 
ary streak of blue across the trees. What a 
decent old place it was, thought Ken. Was it 
only because it constituted home? No; they 


VENTUEES AND ADVENTUEES 133 


had worked to make it so, and it had ripened 
and expanded under their hands. 

shouldn’t mind Mother’s seeing it, now,” 
Ken reflected. 

He sighed as he remembered the last diffi- 
cult letter which he and Phil had composed — 
a strictly truthful letter, which said much and 
told nothing. He wondered how much longer 
the fiction would have to be sustained; when 
the doctor at Hilltop would sanction a revela- 
tion of all that had been going on since that 
desolate March day, now so long ago. 

As Ken neared the house, he heard the reedy 
voice of the organ, and, stopping beside the 
lighted window, looked in. Felicia was mend- 
ing beside the lamp; Kirk sat at the melodeon, 
rapturously making music. From the some- 
what vague sweetness of the melody, Ken rec- 
ognized it as one of Kirk’s own compositions — 
without beginning, middle, or end, but with a 
gentle, eerie harmony all its own. The Maes- 
tro, who was thoroughly modern in his instruc- 
tion, if old-school himself, was teaching com- 
position hand in hand with the other branches 
of music, and he allowed himself, at times, to 
become rather enthusiastic. 


134 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


^‘Even if I didnT want him to make music 
of his own,” he told Felicia, couldn’t stop 
him. So I supply the bricks and mortar for 
the foundation. He might as well build his 
little tunes rightly from the beginning. He will 
go far — yes, far. It is sheer harmony.” And 
the Maestro would sigh deeply, and nod his fine 
head. 

Ken, remembering these words with some 
awe, studied his brother’s face, through the 
pane, and then came quietly in at the door. 
Kirk left his tune unfinished, and launched him- 
self in the direction of Ken, who scooped him 
into his arms. 

‘^Do you know, Phil,” Ken said, voicing at 
once the thought he had felt all the way up 
Winterbottom Eoad; ^‘do you know, I think, 
after all, this is the very best thing we could 
have done.” 

‘‘What?” Phil asked, not being a mind- 
reader. 

Ken said, sweeping his arm about 
the lamplit room. “This place. We thought 
it was such a horrible mistake, at first. It was 
a sort of venture to take.” 

“A happy venture,” Felicia murmured, 


VENTUEES AND ADVENTUEES 135 


bending over her sewing. ‘^But it wouldn’t 
have been so happy if the defender of his 
kindred hadn’t slaved on the high seas ‘for 
to maintain his brither and me,’ like Henry 
Martin in the ballad.” 

“Oh, fiddlestick!” said Ken. “Who wants 
to loaf around? Speaking of loaf, I ’m 
hungry. ’ ’ 

“Supper ’s doing itself on the stove,” Phil 
said. “Look lively with the table, Kirk.” 

Kirk did so, — ^his efficiency as a table-setter 
had long since been proved, — and Ken, as the 
weary breadwinner, stretched out in a chair. 

‘ ‘ Did you happen to remember, ’ ’ said Felicia, 
coming to the door, spoon in hand, “that the 
Kirk has a birthday this week?” 

“It hasf’^ exclaimed Ken. “I say, I ’d for- 
gotten. ’ ’ 

“It’s going to be nine; think of that!” said 
Phil. “Woof! My kettle ’s boiling over!” 
She made a hasty exit, while Ken collared his 
brother and looked him over. 

^‘Who ’d ha’ thunk it!” he said. “Well, 
well, what ’s to be done about this?” 

“Lots,” said Fehcia, suddenly appearing 
with the supper. *^Lots!'^ 


CHAPTER XI 


THE NINE GIFTS 


WO evenings later, Ken confronted his sis- 



ter at the foot of the stairs as she came 


down from seeing Kirk to bed. 

‘ ‘ Where, said Ken, ‘4s your Braille slated’ 
‘^What/^ said Felicia, “do you want with a 
Braille slate, if I may askT^ 

“You mayn%^’ said Ken, conclusively. 

“But it makes a difference,’^ Phil argued. 
“If you want to write Braille with it, — ^which 
seems unlikely, — ’ll consider. But if you want 
it to prop open the door with, or crack nuts on, 
or something, you can’t have it.” 

“I can think of lots better things to crack 
nuts on than a Braille slate,” said Ken. “I 
want to use it for its rightful purpose. Come 
now, my girl, out with it!” 

“Wish you luck,” said Felicia, going to the 
educational shelf; “here it is.” 

Ken eyed it mistrustfully — a slab of wood, 
crossed by a movable metal strip which was 
pierced with many small, square openings. 


136 


THE NINE GIFTS 137 

‘‘Also,^’ said Ken, ^‘the alphabet of the lan- 
guage/’ 

‘‘American Uncontracted, or Eevised, Grade 
One and a Half!” Phil asked airily. 

“They sound equally bad, but if there ’s any 
choice, give me the easiest. Sounds like geo- 
logical survey stuff.” 

Phil rummaged again, and brought to light 
an alphabet which she had made for herself 
in her early Braille days. 

“And the paper and stuff you use,” Ken de- 
manded. 

“Here, take everything!” cried Felicia, 
thrusting out handfuls of irrelevant books and 
papers. “Stop asking for things in dribbles.” 

Ken settled himself at the table, scowled at 
the embossed alphabet, and then clamped a 
piece of the heavy paper into the slate. He 
grasped the Uttle punch firmly, and, with a man- 
ner vigorous, if not defiant, he set to work. 

“You just poke holes in the paper through 
the squares, eh, and they turn into humps?” 

“The squares don’t turn into humps; the 
holes do. Don’t whack so hard.” 

There was silence for a short time, broken 
only by Ken’s mutterings and the click of the 


138 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


stylus. Felicia looked up, then gazed medita- 
tively across the table at the enterprise. 

‘Hs it for a Hebrew person she inquired 
gently. 

'^Hehrew?*^ Ken said; ‘H should rather say 
not. WhyT’ 

You ’re writing it backward — hke Yiddish.” 

“I ’m doing it from left to right, which is 
the way one usually writes,” said Ken, in a 
superior tone. “You ’re looking at it upside- 
down. You ’re twisted.” 

“The holes,” said Felicia, mildly, “in order 
to become readable humps on the other side, 
have to be punched right to left. ’ ’ 

“Oh!” said Ken. After a moment of 
thought he exclaimed, somewhat indignant : 
“You mean to say, then, that you have to re- 
verse the positions of all these blooming dots, 
besides writing ’em backward?” 

“Yes.” 

“You have to read ’em one way, and write 
’em another, and remember ’em hothf^^ 

“You do.” 

“And- — and Kirk does that?” 

“Yes; and he knows Eevised, Grade One and 
a Half, too, and our alphabet besides, and em- 


THE NINE GIFTS 


139 


bossed music, a little, and arithmetic, and — ’’ 

‘‘DonT,’^ said Ken. ^Ht makes a fellow feel 
cheap. 

With which he removed the paper and 
clamped in a fresh sheet. The work progressed 
silently ; Ken occasionally gnashed his teeth and 
tore away the paper, but after a time the mis- 
takes grew fewer, and Felicia, looking across at 
her brother’s brown, handsome face, found it 
tranquil and sober, an earnest absorption in his 
gray eyes and a gently whimsical smile about 
his mouth. She knew of whom he was think- 
ing, and smiled tenderly herself as she watched 
his big hand plod systematically and doggedly 
across the unfamiliar way. Bedtime found Ken 
elated and exhibiting to his sister several neatly 
embossed sheets of paper. 

“ ^All day my — ’ ” read Felicia. 

Murder!” cried Ken. forgot you could 
read the stuff I Go to bed, go to bed!” 

At a rather early hour the next morning, 
Felicia was awakened by the stealthy approach 
to her bedside of a small and cautious figure in 
pajamas. It stood quite still beside the bed, 
listening to find out whether or not she was 
asleep. She spread her arms noiselessly, and 


mo 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


then flung them about the pajamaed one. When 
the confusion of kisses, hugs, and birthday 
greetings had subsided, and Kirk was tucked 
under the quilt, he said: 

“Now see me a story. 

“But I can’t — not like Ken,” Felicia pro- 
tested. 

“Oh, Phil!'' Kirk said in a tone of withering 
reproach. “Silly! A birthday special one, 
please.” 

Felicia thought for some time; then she 
said: 

“It ’s not very nice, but it ’s a sort of birth- 
day one. It ’s called The Nine Gifts.” 

“One for each year,” said Kirk, wriggling 
comfortably. 

“Exactly. Once upon a time there was a 
nice person who lived in an old house on a hill. 
One autumn day was his birthday, but he 
wasn’t thinking of any gifts, because there 
could be no one to give him anything, and he 
was quite poor — as far as gold and silver went. 
So he was feeling just a little sad, because peo- 
ple like to have gifts. He came downstairs and 
unlocked his door, and opened it to the beau- 
tiful young day all strung with dew — ” 


THE NINE GIFTS 


141 


‘'Could he see asked Kirk. 

“No/’ said Felicia, “he couldn’t.” 

“Then it was me.” 

“We-e-11,” said his sister, “possibly. But 
when he opened the door, in came the wind, 
all as fresh and dewy as a dawn-wind can be. 
It ruffled up his hair, and fluttered the curtains 
at the windows, and ran all about the room. 
Then it said : 

“ ‘I am the wind. I give you the breath of 
the dawn, and the first sigh of the waking fields 
and hedge-rows, and the cool stillness of the 
forest that is always awake. Take my birth- 
day kiss upon your forehead ! ’ 

“And that was the First Gift. The person 
was quite surprised, but he was very much 
pleased, too. He went out and brought in some 
bread and milk for his breakfast, and then he 
went to get some water at the well. There was 
a gentle, delicious warmth all about in the air, 
and a far-off, round voice said: 

“ ‘I am the sun. I wrap you in a glowing 
mantle of warmth and light. I make the earth 
grow and sing for you. It is I who wake the 
dawn- wind and the birds. Take my warm kiss 
on your upturned face. ’ 


142 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


^‘And that was the Second Gift. The person 
thanked the sun very much, and went in, with 
his heart all warmed, to eat his breakfast. As 
he sat eating, in at the window came all manner 
of little sounds — twitterings and sighings and 
warbhngs and rusthngs, and all the little voices 
said together : 

^We are the sounds of the open. We are 
the birds in the russet meadow, and the whis- 
pering of the orchard trees, the cheep of the 
crickets in the long grass, and the whole hum- 
ming, throbbing voice of out-of-doors. Take 
our kiss upon your waiting senses. ^ 

‘^That was the Third Gift. The person ran 
out at the door to thank the little sounds, when 
what should meet him but a host of the most 
delicious scents I 

‘‘ ‘We are the smell of the taAvny grass, and 
the good tang of the wood-smoke. We are the 
fragrance of ripening apples in the orchard, 
and honeysuckle over the wall. We are the 
clean, cool, mellowing atmosphere of Septem- 
ber. Breathe our sweetness!^ 

“That was the Fourth Gift. To be sure, the 
nice person was quite overwhelmed by this 
time, for he never had expected such a thing. 


THE NINE GIFTS 


143 


As he stooped to thank the delicious scents, he 
touched a little clump of asters by the door- 
stone. 

‘Greeting!^ they piped. ‘We are the flow- 
ers. We are the asters by the door, and bur- 
nished goldenrod in the orchard; trumpeting 
honeysuckle on the fence, sumach burning by 
the roadside, juicy milkweed by the gate. Take 
our cool, green kiss on your gentle fingers ! ’ 
“He stroked their little purple heads, and 
flung himself down beside them for a moment, 
to thank them. As he did so, a big, warm voice 
came from beneath him : 

“ ‘I am the earth. I am the cool clasp of 
the tall grass by the gate. I am the crispness 
of the heath-grass on the upland. I will rock 
you to sleep on my great, grass-carpeted breast. 
I will give you rest and security. Take my 
great kiss on your body. ^ 

“That was the Sixth Gift. Hear me! the 
person was delighted. He lay with his cheek 
to the good earth’s heart, thanking it, when a 
big gusty voice came swinging out of the east. 

“ ‘I am the sea. I give you the sound of 
water about the boat’s bow, and the cry of the 
gulls ; the wet, salt smack of me, the damp fog 


144 THE HAPPY VENTURE 

on your face, and the call out into the wide 
places. ’ 

‘‘The person jumped up and turned his face 
to the blue glint of the hay, and thanked the 
sea for the Seventh Gift. Then he went into 
the house to tidy up the hearth. As he came 
into the room, a queer, gentle, melodious voice, 
which seemed to come from the organ, said : 

“ ‘I am Music. I hold the key to enchant- 
ment. It is I who will sum up for you all the 
other gifts and make them mine — and yours. 
Take my kiss within your soul.’ 

“And that was the Eighth Gift,” Felicia 
paused. 

“But the ninth?” Kirk whispered. 

“I ’m trying to think of it.” 

Kirk clapped his hands suddenly. 

“7 know what it was!” he cried. “Don’t 
you? Oh, donH you, Phil?” 

“No, I don’t. What was it?” 

“Shall I finish?” Kirk asked. 

“Please do.” 

“And the person said, ‘Thank you,’ to the 
organ,” Kirk proceeded gleefully; “and then 
in the door what should stand but a beautiful 
lady. And she said: ‘I ’m your sister Felicia — 


THE NINE GIFTS 145 

Happiness/ And that was the most best gift 
of 

‘ ‘ Naughty person ! ’ ’ said Felicia. ‘ ‘ After all 
those really nice gifts! But — but if you will 
have it that, she said, ‘ Take my kiss upon your 
heart of hearts.’ Oh, Kirk — darling — ^I love 
you ! ’ ’ 

Flowers twined Kirk’s chair at the break- 
fast table — golden honeysuckle, a sweet, second 
blooming, and clematis from the Maestro’s 
hedge. Kirk hung above it, touching, admiring, 
breathing the sweetness of the honeysuckle; 
aware, also, of many others of the Nine Gifts 
already perceptible about the room. But his 
fingers encountered, as he reached for his spoon, 
a number of more substantial presents stacked 
beside his plate. There was the green jersey 
which Felicia had been knitting at privately for 
some time. He hauled it on over his head at 
once, and emerged from its embrace into his sis- 
ter’s. There was, too, a model boat, quite beau- 
tifully rigged and fitted, the painstaking care 
with which it was fashioned testifying to the fact 
that Ken had not been quite so forgetful of his 
brother’s approaching birthday as he had 
seemed to be. 


146 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


^‘She ’s called the Celestine/^ said Ken, as 
Kirk’s fingers sought out rapturously the de- 
tails of the schooner. ‘Ht ’s painted on her 
stem. She ’s not rigged according to Hoyle, 
I ’hi afraid; I was rather shaky about some 
of it.” 

‘‘She has a flag,” Kirk crowed delightedly. 
“Two of ’em! And a little anchor — and — ” he 
became more excited as he found each thing: 
“oh, Ken!” 

There was another gift — a flat one. A book 
of five or six short stories and poems that Kirk 
had loved best to hear his sister read — all 
written out in Braille for him in many of Feli- 
cia’s spare hours. Now he could read them 
himself, when Phil had no time to give him. 
Breakfast was quite neglected ; the cereal grew 
cold. Kirk, who had not, indeed, expected so 
much as the nine gifts of Phil’s tale, was quite 
overcome by these things, which his brother and 
sister had feared were little enough. There was 
one thing more — some sheets of paper covered 
with Braille characters, tucked beside Kirk’s 
plate. 

“That ’s Ken’s handiwork,” Felicia said. 


THE NINE GIFTS 147 

hastily disclaiming any finger in the enterprise, 
don’t know what yon may find!” 

‘Ht ’s perfectly all right, now,” Ken pro- 
tested. ^‘You’ll seel You can read it, can’t 
you, Kirk?” 

Kirk was frowning and laughing at once. 
‘Ht ’s a little bit funny,” he said. ‘^But I 
did n ’t know you could do it at all. Oh, listen 
to it!” 

He declaimed this, with some pauses; 

MY RELATIVE, K. S. 

^^While I am at my watery work 
All up and down the bay, 

I think about my brother Kirk 
A million times a day. 

^^All day my job seems play to me, 

My duties they are light. 

Because I know I ’m going to see 
My brother Kirk that night. 

ponder over, at my biz, 

How nice he is 
(That smile of his I), 

And eke his cheerful, open phiz. 

“And also I am proud of him, 

I sing the praises loud of him. 

And all the wondering multitude 
At once exclaims ; ^Gee Whiz 


148 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


seems this relative of mine 
Is going to have a fete. 

They tell me that he ^11 now be nine, 

Instead of half-past eight. 

How simply fine! 

We’ll dance and dine! 

We’ll pass the foaming bowl of wine! 

And here ’s our toast 
(We proudly boast 
There is n’t any need to urge us) : 

Hip, Hip, Hooray for Kirkleigh Sturgis F 

Ken gave the three cheers promptly, and 
then said ; ‘ ‘ That one ’s silly. The other ^s the 
way I really feel. Oh, don T read it alond I ’ ^ 
Kirk, who had opened his mouth to begin 
the next page, closed it again, and followed the 
lines of Braille silently. This is what he read : 
read: 

^‘At eight o’clock on the day you were bom, 

T found a fairy under a thorn; 

He looked at me hard, he looked at me queerly, 

And he said, ^Ah, Ken, you shall love him dearly.^ 

‘T was then myself but a wee small lad. 

But I well remember the look that he had; 

And I thought that his words came wondrous true. 

For whom could I love more dear than you? 

“To-day at dawn I was out alone, 

I found a wee fairy beside a stone; 

And he said, as he looked at me, far above him, 

^Ah, Ken, you have only begun to love him !’ ” 


THE NINE GIFTS 


149 


There could be no possible answer to this but 
a rush from Kirk and an onslaught of hugs, 
from which it was long before Ken could dis- 
entangle himself. 

‘‘Oh, what have I done!^’ Ken cried. “Yes, 
of course I mean it, silly! But do, do have a 
care — we ^re all mixed up with the marmalade 
and the oatmeal, as it is!’’ 

Ken had proclaimed the day a half -holiday 
for himself, but Kirk was to go with him on 
the morning trip, and Phil, too, if she wanted 
to go. She did want, so Applegate Farm was 
locked up, and three radiant Sturgises walked 
the warm, white ribbon of Winterbottom Eoad 
to the Dutchman, Kirk was allowed to steer 
the boat, under constant orders from Ken, who 
compared the wake to an inebriated corkscrew. 
He also caught a fish over the stern, while Ken 
was loading up at Bayside. Then, to crown the 
day’s delight, under the door at Applegate, 
when they returned, was thrust a silver-edged 
note from the Maestro, inviting them all to 
supper at his house, in honor of the occasion. 


CHAPTER XII 


^^EOSES IN THE MOONLIGHT’^ 

T he Maestro house wore always a man- 
tle of gentle aloofness, like something for- 
gotten among its overgrown garden paths. To 
Kirk, it was a place under a spell ; to the others, 
who could see its grave, vine-covered, outer 
walls and its dim interior crowded with strange 
and wonderful things, it seemed a lodging 
place for memories, among which the Maestro 
moved as if he himseK were living a remem- 
bered dream. 

On this rich September afternoon, they found 
him standing on the upper terrace, waiting for 
them. He took Kirk^s hand, offered his arm 
gallantly to Felicia, and they all entered the 
high-studded hall, where the firelight, reaching 
rosy shafts from the library, played catch-as- 
catch-can with the shadows. 

Supper, a little later, was served in the din- 

150 


‘‘EOSES IN THE MOONLIGHT^’ 151 


ing-room — the first meal that the Sturgises had 
eaten there. Tall candles burned in taller sil- 
ver candlesticks ; their light flowed gently across 
the gleaming cloth, touched the Maestro ’s white 
hair, and lost itself timidly in the dim area out- 
side the table. Kirk was enthroned in a big 
carved chair at the foot of the table, very grave 
and happy, with a candle at either side. 

‘‘A fit shrine for devotion,’^ murmured the 
Maestro, looking across at him, and then, turn- 
ing, busied himself vigorously with the carving. 

It was a quite wonderful supper — banquet 
would have been a more fitting name for it, 
the Sturgises thought. For such food was not 
seen on the little table at Applegate Farm. 
And there was raspberry wine, in which to 
drink Kirk’s health, and the Maestro stood up 
and made a beautiful speech. There was also 
a cake, with nine candles flaring bravely, — no 
one had ever before thought to give Kirk a 
birthday cake with candles that he could not 
see, and he was deeply impressed. 

And after it was all over, they gathered 
content about the library fire, and the Maestro 
went to the piano. 

‘^Kirk,” he said quietly, have no very ex- 


152 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


citing present for you. But once, long ago, I 
made a song for a child on his birthday. He 
was just as old as you. He has no longer any 
need of it — so I give it, my dear, to you. It 
is the greatest gift I have to give.’’ 

In the silence that followed, there crept into 
the firelit room the star-clear notes of a little 
prelude. Then the Maestro sang softly: 

^^Roses in the moonlight, 

To-night all thine, 

Pale in the shade, and bright 
In the star-shine; 

Roses and lilies white. 

Dear child of mine! 

My heart I give to thee, 

This day aU thine; 

At thy feet let it be — 

It is the sign 
Of all thou art to me. 

Dear child — ” 

But the poor Maestro could not finish the 
verse. He swung about on the piano-stool, try- 
ing to frame a laughing apology. Kirk went to 
him instantly, both hands outstretched in his 
haste. His fingers found the Maestro’s bowed 
shoulders ; his arms went tight about the Maes- 


‘‘EOSES IN THE MOONLIGHT” 


153 


tro’s neck. In his passionately whispered confi- 
dence the old gentleman must have found solace, 
for he presently smiled, — a real smile, — and then 
still keeping Kirk beside him, began playing a 
sonata. Ken and Fehcia, sunk unobtrusively 
in the big chairs at the hearth, were each aware 
of a subtle kindredship between these two at 
the piano — a something which they could not 
altogether understand. 

‘‘He brings out a side of Kirk that we don’t 
know about,” Felicia thought. “It must be 
the music. Oh, what music!” 

It was difficult to leave a place of such divine 
sounds, but Kirk’s bedtime was long past, and 
the moon stood high and cold above the Maes- 
tro’s garden. 

“Is it shining on all the empty pools and 
things?” Kirk asked, at the hedge. 

“Yes, and on the meadow, and the silver 
roof of Applegate Farm,” Phil told him. 

“ ‘Koses in the moonlight, to-night all 
thine,’ ” Kirk sang dreamily. 

“Do you mean to say you can sing it so 
soon?” Ken gasped. 

“He ran away in the moonlight,” Kirk mur- 
mured. “Away to sea. Would you, Ken?” 


154 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


‘^Not if I had a father like the Maestro, and a 
brother like you,’’ said Ken, fitting the key to 
the door of Applegate Farm. 

A very few days after Kirk had begun on his 
new year, he and Felicia went into Asquam to 
collect a few things of which the farm-house 
stood in need. For there had been a hint that 
Mrs. Sturgis might soon leave Hilltop, and Feli- 
cia was determined that Applegate Farm 
should wear its best face for her mother, who 
did not, as yet, even know of its existence. A 
great many little things, which Felicia had long 
been meaning to buy, now seemed to find a 
legitimate hour for their purchase. So she and 
Kirk went the round of the Asquam Utility Em- 
porium, B. B. Jones Co., and the Beacon Light 
Store, from each of which places of business 
they emerged with another package. 

‘H told Ken we ’d meet him at the boat,” 
Felicia said, “so we might as well walk over 
there now, and all come home together. Oh, 
how thick the fog is !” 

“ Is it ! ” Kirk said. ‘ ‘ Oh, yes, there goes the 
siren. ” 

“I can hardly see the Dutchman, it ’s so 
white at the end of the pier. Ken is n’t there — 


‘^EOSES IN THE MOONLIGHT’’ 155 


he must have gone with Hop to see about some- 
thing. ’ ’ 

‘^Let ’s wait in the boat,” Kirk suggested, 
love the gluggy way it sounds, and the way 
it sloshes up and down.” 

They put the bundles on the wharf and 
climbed into the boat. The water slapped vig- 
orously against its side, for the tide was run- 
ning, and above, a wraith-like gull occasionally 
dropped one creaking, querulous cry. 

‘^Goodness !” Felicia exclaimed, ‘^with all our 
shopping, I forgot the groceries ! I ’ll run back. 
I ’ll not be a minute. Tell Ken when he comes. ’ ’ 
She scrambled up the steps and ran down the 
pier, calling back to Kirk: ‘‘Stay just where 
you are!” 

There were more people in the grocery store 
than Felicia had ever seen there, for it was 
near the closing hour. She was obliged to wait 
much longer than she had expected. When she 
returned to the wharf, Ken was not in sight. 
Neither was the Flying Dutchman. 

“How queer!” Phil thought. “Ken must 
have taken her out. How funny of him; they 
knew I was coming right back. ’ ’ 

She sat down on a pile-head and began hum- 


156 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


ming to herself as she counted over her pack- 
ages and added up her expenditure. She 
looked up presently, and saw Ken walking to- 
ward her. He was alone. Even then, it was 
a whole second before there came over her a 
hideous, sickening rush of fear. 

She flew to meet him. ‘‘Where the boat — 
Ken, where ^s the boat?^^ 

“The boat? I left her temporarily tied up. 
Wkat ’s the mat — ” At that moment he saw 
the empty gray water at the pier head. Two 
breathless voices spoke together : 

“Where ^s Kirk?’’ 

“He was in the boat,” Felicia gasped 
hoarsely. “I ran back after the groceries.” 

Ken was at the end of the wharf i!n one 
agonized leap. In another second he had the 
frayed, wet end of rope in his hand. 

“That salvaged line!” he said. “Phil, 
couldn’t you see that only her stern line was 
made fast? I left her half -moored till I came 
back. That rope was rotten, and it got jammed 
in here and chafed till it parted.” 

“It ’s my fault,” Felicia breathed. 

“Mine,” Ken snapped. “Oh, my heavens! 
look at the fog!” 


‘‘EOSES IN THE MOONLIGHT 157 


‘‘And the tideT’ Felicia hardly dared ask. 

“Going out — to sea.’’ 

A blank, hideous silence followed, broken 
only by the reiterated warning of the dismal 
siren at the lighthouse. 

“It ’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. 
A boat would have to comb every foot of the 
bay in this fog, and night ’s coming. How long 
have you been gone?” 

Felicia looked at her watch. She was aston- 
ished to find it had been over half an hour. 

“Heaven knows where the boat could have 
got to in half an hour,” Ken muttered, “with 
this tide. And the wind ’s going to sea, too. ’ ’ 

Felicia shook him wildly by the arm. “Do 
you realize — Kirk ’s in that boat?” she moaned. 
“Kirk ’s in that boat — do you realize it?” 

Ken tore himself free. 

“No, I don’t want to realize it,” he said in 
a harsh, high voice. “Get back to the house, 
Phil! You can’t do anything. I ’m going 
to the harbor master now — I ’m going every- 
where. I may not be back to-night.” He gave 
her a little push, “Go, Phil.” 

But he ran after her. “Poor old Phil — 
mustn’t worry,” he said gently. “Get back to 


158 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


the farm before it dark and have it all cheer- 
ful for us when we come in — Kirk and I.’’ 

And then he plunged into the reek, and Feli- 
cia heard the quick beat of his steps die away 
down the wharf. 

The harbor master was prompt in action, but 
not encouraging. He got otf with Ken in his 
power boat in surprisingly short order. The 
coast guard, who had received a very urgent 
telephone message, launched the surf -boat, and 
tried vainly to pierce the blank wall of fog — 
now darkening to twilight^ — ^with their big 
searchlight. Lanterns, lost at once in the murk, 
began to issue from wharf -houses as men 
started on foot up the shore of the bay. 

Ken, in the little hopeless motor-boat, sat 
straining his eyes beyond the dripping bow, till 
he saw nothing but flashes of light that did not 
exist. The Flying Dutchman — ^the Flying 
Dutchman — why had he not known that she 
must be a boat of ill omen? Joe Pasquale — 
drowned in February. ^‘We got him, but we 
never did find his boat’^ — ‘‘curious tide-racks 
’round here — cur’ous tide-racks.” 

The harbor master was really saying that 
now, as he had said it before. Yes, the tide ran 


‘‘KOSES IN THE MOONLIGHT^’ 159 


cruelly fast beside the boat, black and swirling 
and deep. A gaunt something loomed into the 
light of the lantern, and made Ken^s heart 
leap. It was only a can-buoy, lifting lonely to 
the swell. 

Far off, the siren raised its mourning voice. 


CHAPTER XIII 


‘^THE SEA IS A TYRANT 

K en stumbled into the open door of Apple- 
gate Farm at three the next morning. 
Felicia was asleep in a chair by the cold ashes 
of the fire. A guttering candle burned on the 
table. She woke instantly and stared at him 
with wide eyes. 

^‘What is itr^ she said, and then sprang up. 
‘^Alone?^’ 

‘‘Yes,’’ Ken said. “Not yet. I ’m going 
back in a little while. I wanted to tell you how 
everybody is working, and all.” 

She ran to bring him something to eat, while 
he flung himself down before the hearth, dead 
tired. 

“The fog ’s still down heavy,” he said, when 
she came back. “The coast guard ’s been out 
all night. There are men on shore, too, and 
some other little boats. ’ ’ 

“But the tide was running out,” Phil said. 
“He ’s gone. Kirk ’s— gone, Ken!” 

160 


‘‘THE SEA IS A TYEANT’’ 


161 


“No,’’ Ken said, between his teeth. “No, 
Phil. Oh, no, no !” He got np and shook him- 
self. “ Go to bed, now, and sleep. The idea of 
sitting up with a beastly cold candle ! ’ ’ 

He kissed her abruptly and unexpectedly and 
stalked out at the door, a weary, disheveled 
figure, in the first pale, fog-burdened gleam of 
dawn. 

It was some time after the Flying Dutchman 
parted her one insufficient mooring-rope before 
Kirk realized that the sound of the water about 
her had changed from a slap to a gliding ripple. 
There was no longer the short tug and lurch as 
she pulled at her painter and fell back; there 
was no longer the tide sound about the gaunt 
piles of the wharf. Kirk, a little apprehensive, 
stumbled “aft and felt for the stern-line. It 
gave in his hand, and the slack, wet length of 
it flew suddenly aboard, smacking his face with 
its cold and slimy end. He knew, then, what 
had happened, but he felt sure that the boat 
must still be very near the wharf — perhaps 
drifting up to the rocky shore between the piers. 
He clutched the gunwale and shouted: 

“Ken! Oh, Ken!” 


162 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


He did not know that he was shouting in ex- 
actly the wrong direction, and the wind car- 
ried his voice even farther from shore. His 
voice sounded much less loud than he had ex- 
pected. He tried calling Felicia’s name, but 
it seemed even less resonant than Ken’s. He 
stopped calling, and stood listening. Nothing 
hut the far-otf fog-siren, and the gulls’ faint 
cries overhead. The wind was blowing fresher 
against his cheek, for the boat was in mid- 
channel by this time. The fog clung close 
about him; he could feel it on the gunwale, wet 
under his hands; it gathered on his hair and 
trickled down his forehead. The broken rope 
slid suddenly off the stern sheets and twined 
itself clammily about his bare knee. He started 
violently, and then picked it off with a shiver. 

The lighthouse siren, though still distant, 
sounded nearer, which meant that the boat was 
drifting seaward. Kirk realized that, all at 
once, and gave up his shouting altogether. He 
sat down in the bottom of the boat, clasped his 
knees, and tried to think. But it was not easy 
to think. He had never in his life wanted so 
much to see as he did now. It was so differ- 
ent, being alone in the dark, or being in it with 



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‘^THE SEA IS A TYRANT” 


163 


Ken or Felicia or the Maestro on the kind, 
warm, friendly land. He remembered quite 
well how the Maestro had said: ‘^The sea is a 
tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases.” 

The sea^s voice hissed along the side of the 
boat, now, — the voice of a monster ready to 
leap aboard, — and he couldn’t see to defend 
himself! He flung his arms out wildly into his 
eternal night, and then burst suddenly into 
tears. He cried for some time, but it was the 
thought of Ken which made him stop. Ken 
would have said, ‘Hsn’t there enough salt 
water around here already, without such a mess 
of tears!” 

That was a good idea — to think about Ken. 
He was such a definite, solid, comforting thing 
to think about. Kirk almost forgot the stretch 
of cold gray water that lay between them now. 
It wasn’t sensible to cry, anyway. It made 
your head huzzy, and your throat ache. Also, 
afterward, it made you hungry. Kirk decided 
that it was unwise to do anything at this par- 
ticular moment which would make him hungry. 
Then he remembered the hardtack which Ken 
kept in the bow locker to refresh himself with 
during trips. Kirk fumbled for the button of 


164 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


the locker, and found it and the hardtack. He 
counted them; there were six. He put five of 
them back and nibbled the other carefully, to 
make it last as long as possible. 

The air was more chill, now. Kirk decided 
that it must be night, though he didnT feel 
sleepy. He crawled under the tarpaulin which 
Ken kept to cover the trunks in foul weather. 
In doing so, he bumped against the engine. 
There was another maddening thing I A good, 
competent engine, sitting complacently in the 
middle of the boat, and he not able to start it I 
But even if he had known how to run it, he re- 
flected that he could n T steer the boat. So he 
lay still under the tarpaulin, which was dry, as 
well as warm, and tried to think of all sorts of 
pleasant things. Felicia had told him, when she 
gave him the green sweater on his birthday, that 
a hug and kiss were knit in with each stitch of it, 
and that when he wore it he must think of her 
love holding him close. It held him close now ; 
he could feel the smooth soft loop of her hair 
as she bent down to say good-night; he could 
hear her sing, Do-do, pHit 

That was a good idea — to sing! He clasped 
his hands nonchalantly behind his head, and be- 


‘‘THE SEA IS A TYEANT’^ 


165 


gan the first thing that came to his mind : 

“Roses in the moonlight 
To-night all thine, 

Pale in the shade — 

But he did not finish. For the wind^s voice 
was stronger, and the waves drowned the little 
tune, so lonely there in the midst of the empty 
water. Kirk cried himself to sleep, after all. 

He could not even tell when the night gave 
way to cold day-break, for the fog cloaked 
everything from the sun’s waking warmth. It 
might have been a week or a month that he had 
drifted on in the Flying Dutchman — it certainly 
seemed as long as a month. But he had eaten 
only two biscuits and was not yet starved, so 
he knew that it could not be even so much as 
a week. Kut he did not try to sing now. He 
was too cold, and he was very thirsty. He 
crouched under the tarpaulin, and presently he 
ate another hardtack biscuit. He could not 
hear the lighthouse fog-signal at all, now, and 
the waves were much bigger under the boat. 
They lifted her up, swung her motionless for a 
moment, and then let her slide giddily into the 
trough of another sea. 


166 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


‘^Even if I reached a desert island/^ Kirk 
thought mournfully, ‘H donT know what I ’d 
do. People catch turkles and shoot at parrots 
and things, but they can see what they ’re do- 
ing.” 

The boat rolled on, and Kirk began to feel 
quite wretchedly sick, and thirstier than ever. 
He lay flat under the tarpaulin and tried to 
count minutes. Sixty, quite fast — that was one 
minute. Had he counted two minutes, now, or 
was it three? Then he found himself counting 
on and on — a hundred and fifty-one, a hundred 
and fifty-two. 

wish I ’d hurry up and die,” said poor 
Kirk out loud. 

Then his darkness grew more dark, for he 
could no longer think straight. There was 
nothing but long swirling waves of dizziness 
and a rushing sound. 

‘ ‘ Phil, ’ ’ Kirk tried to say. ‘ ‘ Mother. ’ ’ 

At about this time, Ken was standing in the 
government wireless station, a good many miles 
from Asquam. He had besieged an astonished 
young operator early in the morning, and had 
implored him to call every ship at sea within 


‘^THE SEA IS A TYRANT 


167 


xeacli. Now, in the afternoon, he was back 
again, to find out whether any replies had come. 

‘‘No boat sighted,’^ all the hurrying steamers 
had replied. “Fog down heavy. Will keep 
look-out.’’ 

Ken had really given up all hope, long be- 
fore. Yet — could he ever give up hope, so long 
as life lasted? Such strange things had hap- 
pened — Most of all, he could not let Phil give 
up. Yet he knew that he could not keep on with 
this pace much longer — no sleep, and virtually 
no food. But then, if he gave up the search, if 
he left a single thing undone while there was 
still a chance, could he ever bear himself again ? 
He sat in a chair at the wireless station, looking 
dully at the jumping blue spark. 

“Keep on»with it, please,” he said. “I’m 
going out in a boat again. ’ ’ 

“The fog ’s lifting, I think,” said the opera- 
tor. 

“Oh, thank the Lord!” groaned Ken. “It 
was that — the not being able to see/^ 

Yes — Kirk had felt that, too. 

At Applegate Farm, Felicia wandered from 
room to room like a shadow, mechanically doing 


168 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


little tasks that lay to her hand. She was alone 
in her distress; they had not yet told the 
Maestro of this disaster, for they knew he would 
share their grief. Felicia caught the sound 
of a faint jingling from without, and moved 
slowly to the gate, where Mr. Hobart was put- 
ting the mail into the box. She opened her 
mother’s letter listlessly as she walked back to 
the house, and sat down upon the doorstep to 
read it — perhaps it would take her mind for a 
moment, this odd, unconscious letter, addressed 
even to a house which no longer sheltered them. 
But the letter smote her with new terror. 

^^Oh, if you only knew, my dear, dear chicks, what it 
will be to escape this kindly imprisonment — what it will 
mean to see you all again! I can hardly wait to come 
up the dear old familiar path to 24 Westover Street and 
hug you all — 1^11 hug Ken, even if he hates it, and Kirk, 
my most precious baby! They tell me I must be very 
careful still, but I know that the sight of you will be 
all that I need for the finishing remedy. So expect me, 
then, by the 12.05 on Wednesday, and good-by till then, 
my own dears.” 

Felicia sat on the door-stone, transfixed. 
Her mother coming home, on Wednesday — so 
much sooner than they had expected ! She did 
not even know of the new house; and if she 


‘‘THE SEA IS A TYRANT’^ 


169 


were to come to a home without Kirk — if there 
were never to be Kirk! Almost a week re- 
mained before Wednesday; how could she be 
put off? What if the week went by without 
hope; no hope, ever? Felicia sat there for 
hours, till the sun of late afternoon broke 
through the fog at last, and the mellow fields 
began one by one to reappear, reaching into the 
hazy distance. Felicia rose and went slowly 
into the house. On top of the organ lay the 
book of stories and poems she had written out 
in Braille for Kirk. It lay open, as he had left 
it, and she glanced at the page. 

^When the voices of children are heard on the green, 

And laughing is heard on the hill, 

My heart is at rest within my breast. 

And everything else is still. 

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, 

And the dews of the night arise.^ ” , . . . 

Felicia gave up the struggle with her grief. 
Leaving the door of Applegate Farm wide, she 
fled blindly to the Maestro. He was playing to 
himself and smiling when she crept into the 
library, but he stopped instantly when he saw 
her face. Before she could help herself, she 
had told him everything, thrust her mother 


170 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


letter into his hand, and then gave way to the 
tears she had fought so long. The Maestro 
made no sign nor motion. His lips tightened, 
and his eyes blazed suddenly, hut that was all. 

He was all sohcitude for Felicia. She must 
not think of going back to the empty farm- 
house. He arranged a most comfortable little 
supper beside the fire, and even made her smile, 
with his eager talk, all ringing with hope and 
encouragement. And finally he put her in 
charge of his sympathetic little housekeeper, 
who tucked her up in a great, dark, soft bed. 

Left alone in the library, the Maestro paced 
unsteadily up and down. ‘Ht is the sea that 
takes them!’’ he whispered. “It took my son; 
now it has taken one whom I loved as my son. ’ ’ 

He sank down upon the piano-stool and gazed 
at the sheet of music on the music-rack. It was 
Kirk’s last exercise, written out carefully in 
the embossed type that the Maestro had been 
at such pains to learn and teach. Something 
like a sob shook the old musician. He raised 
clenched, trembling fists above his head, and 
brought them down, a shattering blow, upon the 
keyboard. Then he sat still, his face buried 
in his arms on the shaken piano. 


‘‘THE SEA IS A TYRANT 


171 


Felicia, lying stiff and wide-eyed in the great 
bed above, heard the crash of the hideous dis- 
cord, and shuddered. She had been trying to 
remember the stately, comforting words of the 
prayer for those in peril on the sea, but now, 
frightened, she buried her face in the pillow. 

“Oh, dear God,^^ she faltered. “You — You 
must bring him back — ^You must!^^ 


CHAPTER XIV 


THB CELBSTINE PLAYS HER PART 

H e ’S a deader/’ said one of the men, pull- 
ing off his watch-cap. 

‘ ‘ No, he ain ’t, ’ ’ said another. ‘ ‘ He ’s warm. ’ ’ 
‘ ^ But look at his eyes, ’ ’ said the first. ‘ ‘ They 
ain’t right.” 

Where ’s the old man?” inquired one. 
‘‘Skipper ’s taking a watch below, arter the 
fog; don’t yer go knockin’ him up now, Joe.” 

“Wait till the mate comes. Thunder, why 
don’t yer wrop somep’n round the kid, you 
loon?” 

The big schooner was getting under way 
again. The mate’s voice spoke sharply to the 
helmsman. 

“Helm up — steady. Nothing off — stead-y.” 
Then he left the quarter-deck and strode rap- 
idly down to the little group amidships. He 
was a tall man, with a brown, angular face, and 
deep-set, rather melancholy, blue eyes. His 
172 


CELESTINE.VhAYS HEE PAET 173 


black hair was just beginning to gray above his 
temples, and several lines, caused more by 
thought than age, scored his lean face. 

‘‘What have we picked up, here, anyway?’’ 
he demanded. “Stand off, and let me look.” 

There was not much to see — a child in a green 
jersey, with blown, damp hair and a white face. 

“You tink he ’s dead?” A big Swede asked 
the question. 

The mate plunged a quick hand inside the 
green sweater. 

“No, he ’s not. But he’s blind. Get out 
with that stuff, Jolak, what d ’ye think this is? 
Get me some brandy, somebody.” 

J olak retired with the pickled cabbage he had 
offered as a restorative. No one looked to see 
where the brandy came from on a ship where 
none was supposed to be but in the medicine 
chest. It came, however, without delay, and 
the mate opened the flask. 

“Now,” he said, when he had poured some of 
its contents down the child’s throat, and lifted 
him from the deck, “let me through.” 

The first thing of which Kirk was conscious 
was a long, swinging motion, unlike the short 
roll of the Dutchman, There was also a com- 


174 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


plex creaking and sighing, a rustling and rat- 
tling. There was a most curious, half -disagree- 
able, half-fascinating smell. Kirk lay quietly 
on something which seemed much softer and 
warmer than the bottom of the Flying Dutch- 
man, and presently he became aware of a soft 
strumming sound, and of a voice which sang 
murmurously ; 

“Off Cape de Gatte 

I lost my hat, 

And where d’ye think I found it? 

In Port Mahon 

Under a stone 

With all the girls around it.” 

like that,” said Kirk, in a small voice. 
‘^Go on.” 

But the singing stopped immediately, and 
Kirk feared that he had only dreamed it, after 
all. However, a large, warm hand was laid 
quite substantially on his forehead, and the 
same voice that had been singing, said : 

^‘H ^m! Thought you ’d have another go at 
the old world, after all?” 

‘‘Where is this?” Kirk asked. 

“This is the four-mast schooner C destine, 
returning from South America. I am Martin, 


CELESTINE PLAYS HER PART 175 


mate of said schooner — at your service. Hun- 
gry r’ 

^‘That ’s funny/ ^ said Kirk; ‘Hhe boat Ken 
gave me is called the Celestine. And she *s a 
four-masted schooner. Where ’s KenT^ 

’m sorry — don’t know. Hungry?” 

‘‘I think I am,” said Kirk. 

Certainly the mate of the Celestine had a 
most strong and comfortable arm wherewith to 
raise a person. He administered bread and hot 
condensed milk, and Kirk began to realize that 
he was very hungry indeed. 

‘^Now you go to sleep,” Mr. Martin advised, 
after his brief manner. ‘‘Warm, now?” 

Yes, Kirk was quite warm and cozy, but very 
much bewildered, and desirous of asking a hun- 
dred questions. These the mate forbade. 

“You go to sleep,” he commanded. 

“Then please sing another tune,” Kirk said. 
“What was that you were playing on?” 

‘ ‘ Violin, ’ ’ said Mr. Martin. ‘ ‘ Fiddle. I was 
plunking it like a banjo. Now I ’ll play it, if 
you ’ll stop talking.” 

Kirk did, and the mate began to play. His 
music was untaught, and he himself had made 
up the strange airs he played. They sighed fit- 


176 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


fully through the little cabin like the rush of 
wind and water without; blended with it, min- 
gled with the hundred little voices of the ship. 
The Celestine slipped on up the coast, singing 
softly to herself, and Kirk fell asleep with the 
undulating wail of the violin and the whisper 
of water filling his half -awakened senses. 

He woke abruptly, much later, and called for 
Felicia suddenly ; then, recollecting hazily 
where he was, for Mr. Martin. Hearing no 
sound, he was frightened, and cried out in re- 
membered terror. 

^ ^Steady!’’ said the mate’s voice. ‘‘What 
the trouble?” 

“I don’t know,” said Kirk. “I — I think I 
need to talk to somebody. There hasn’t been 
anybody for so long. ’ ’ 

“Well, go ahead,” said the mate. “I ’m in 
my bunk. If you think there ’s room enough, 
I ’ll put you in here. More sociable, rather. ’ ^ 

There was not much room, but Kirk was so 
thankful to clasp a human being once more, that 
he did not care how narrow the quarters might 
he. He put his cheek against the mate’s arm, 
and they lay silent, the man very stiff and un- 
yielding. 


CELESTINE PLAYS HER PART 177 

^*The Maestro would like to hear you play/' 
Kirk murmured. ^‘He loves queer tunes like 
that. He even likes the ones I make up." 

^‘Oh, you make up tunes, do you?" 

‘‘Little ones. But he makes wonderful ones, 
• — and he plays wonderfully, too." 

“Who?" 

“The Maestro." 

“Who 's he?" 

Kirk told him — at great length. He likewise 
unburdened his heart, which had been steeped 
so long in loneliness and terror, and recounted 
the wonder and beauty of Applegate Farm, and 
Felicia and Ken, and the model ship, and the 
Maestro's waiting garden, and all that went to 
make up his dear, familiar world, left so long 
ago, it seemed. 

“But," he said rather mournfully, “I don't 
know whether I shall ever see any of them 
again, if we just keep on sailing and sailing. 
Are you going back to South America again?" 

The mate laughed a little. “No," he said. 
“The Celestine going to Bedford. We can't 
put her off her course to drop you at Asquam — 
harbor 's no good, anyhow. My time 's up 
when she docks. I '11 take you home." 


178 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


‘‘Have you always been mate of the Celes- 
Kirk inquired. 

“I have not/^ said Mr. Martin. “I signed 
aboard of her at Eio this trip, to get up into 
the Christian world again. I Ve been deck- 
hand and seaman and mate on more vessels than 
I can count — in every part of the uncivilized 
world. I skippered one ship, even — ^pestilential 
tub that she was.’^ 

He fell silent after this speech, longer than 
any he had made so far. 

“Then I ^11 get home,’’ Kirk said. “Home. 
Can ’t we let ’em know, or anything? I sup- 
pose they ’ve been worrying. ’ ’ 

“I think it likely that they have,” said the 
mate. “No, this ship ’s got no wireless. I ’ll 
send ’em a telegram when we dock to-morrow.” 

‘ ‘ Thank you, ’ ’ said Kirk. Then, after a long 
pause: “Oh, if you knew how awful it was 
out there.” 

“I know,” said Mr. Martin. 

The Celestine was bowling into Bedford Har- 
bor with a fair wind. Kirk, in a reefer any 
number of sizes too large for him, sat on a 
hatch-coaming and drank in the flying wonder 


CELESTINE PLAYS HER PART 179 


of the schooner’s way. He was sailing on a 
great ship! How surprised Ken would be — 
and envious, too, for Ken had always longed to 
sail in a ship. The wind soughed in the sails 
and sang in the rigging, and the water flew past 
the Celestine and bubbled away behind her in 
a seething curve of foam. Mr. Martin stood 
looking up at the smooth, rounded shape of the 
main topsail, and whistling the song about the 
hat which he had lost and so miraculously 
found. He looked more than usually thoughtful 
and melancholy. 

A fussy tug took the Celestine the last stage 
of her journey, and early afternoon found her 
warped in to the wharf where Ken had seen her 
on the eve of her departure. Then, she had 
been waking to action at the beginning of a long 
cruise; now, a battered gull with gray, folded 
wings, she lay at the dock, pointing her bow- 
sprit stiffly up to the dingy street where horses 
tramped endlessly over the cobblestones. The 
crew was jubilant. Some were leaving for 
other ships; some were going on shore leave, 
with months’ pay unspent. 

^m attending to this salvage, sir,” said 
Mr. Martin, to the captain. ‘‘My folks live up 


180 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


Asquam way. I ^11 take him along with me/’ 

Asquam’s languid representative of the tele- 
graph knocked upon the door of Applegate 
Farm, which was locked. Then he thrust the 
yellow envelope as far under the door as pos- 
sible and went his way. An hour later, a tall 
man and a radiant small boy pushed open the 
gate on Winterbottom Road and walked across 
the yellow grass. Kirk broke away and ran to- 
ward the house, hands outflung. 

‘‘Phil I Ken I” he called jubilantly. 

His face shadowed as his hands came against 
the unyielding door of the house. 

“Phil — ” he faltered. 

“Perhaps they haven’t the telegram,” Mr. 
Martin said. “We ’ll have to wait around.” 

“They might be at the Maestro’s,” Kirk said 
suddenly. “Come — run quick — I ’ll show you 
the way. There ’s a hole in the hedge — are 
you too big to get through?” 

“I think not,” said the mate. 

In the Maestro’s library, Felicia leaned sud- 
denly upon the piano. 


CELESTINE PLAYS HEE PAET 181 


she said, breathing hard, ‘^some- 
thing ’s going to happen — something!’’ 

“What more can happen?” Ken said gently. 

“But — ^oh, please! Do something — I don’t 
know — ” 

‘ ‘ Poor child ! ’ ’ murmured the Maestro. ‘ ‘ Sit 
here, Felicia. Help her, Ken.” 

“I don’t need help,” said Phil. “Oh, you 
think I ’m mad, I suppose. I ’m not. Ken — 
please go and look out — go to the house. Oh, 
Kirk!” 

The Maestro shook his head and put a hand 
on Felicia’s shoulder. 

“Better go, Ken,’^ he said quietly. 

Kenelm stepped upon the terrace. Through 
the long window, which he left open behind 
him, a joyous voice came quite clearly to the 
library. 

“And this is the poor empty pool that I told 
you about, that never has had any water in it 
since then — and are n’t we at the terrace steps 
now?” 

Felicia vowed afterward that she didn’t 
faint. Yet she had no clear recollection of see- 
ing Kirk between the time when she saw him 


182 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


drop the hand of the tall, strange man and run 
up the steps, and when they all were standing 
around her in the library, looking a little grave. 

^‘Phil — PhilP^ Kirk was saying then. ‘‘Oh, 
are nT you glad to see me at all? It ’s me — oh, 
PUl!^^ 

His eager hands sought her face, to be sure it 
was she, so strange and quiet. 

“Just a minute, lamb,’’ she heard Ken say, 
with a hand on Kirk’s shoulder. “Phil does n’t 
feel quite right.” 

Then warm, delicious life rushed over her, 
and she could move again and fling her trem- 
bling arms around Kirk. She and Ken and the 
Maestro all managed to embrace Kirk at once, 
so that they embraced each other, too. And 
Ken was not ashamed of his tears, nor was the 
Maestro. 

The ex-mate of the Celestine stood discreetly 
on the terrace, whistling to himself. Bht he 
was not whistling the song about his hat. No, 
it was a little plaintive air, dimly familiar, Ken 
thought. Where had he heard it before? And 
why was the Maestro straightening with a 
stricken face, from Kirk? 




4 


r 



CHAPTEE XV 


MABTIN I 

‘^Roses in the moonlight, 

To-night all thine.” 

T hat was the tune, to be sure ! The 
Maestro was on his feet. He walked 
slowly to the open French window. 

‘‘What — ^what right have you to come here 
whistling — he breathed. He wheeled 
suddenly on Eark. “Did you sing it to him?’’ 
he demanded. “Is this — what is this?” 

“I didn’t,” said Kirk, quickly; “Oh, I 
didn’t.” 

The air seemed tense, burdened with some- 
thing that hovered there in the stillness of the 
waiting garden. 

“I can think of no one,” said the stranger, 
slowly, “who has a better right to whistle it 
here. ’ ’ 

The Maestro grasped the man’s arm fiercely. 
“Turn around!” he said. “What do you 
mean? What can you mean — unless — ” 

183 


184 


THE HAPPY VENTUKE 


He flung his arm suddenly before his eyes, as 
he met the other’s gaze. 

^ ‘ Martin ! ” he said, in a voice so low that no 
one but Kirk heard it. And they stood there, 
quite still in the pale September sunset — the 
Maestro with his arm across his eyes ; the mate 
of the Celestine with his hands clasped behind 
him and his lips still shaping the tune of the 
song his father had made for him. 

Ken, within the room, swung Kirk into his 
arms. 

‘‘The library door ’s open,” he whispered to 
Felicia. ^^Cut — as fast as ever you can I” 

The little living-room of Applegate Farm 
bloomed once more into firelit warmth. It 
seemed almost to hold forth kindly welcoming 
arms to its children, together again. 

“What shall we talk about first?” Felicia 
sighed, sinking into the hearth chair, with Kirk 
on her lap. “ I never knew so many wildly ex- 
citing things to happen all at once ! ’ ’ 

It came about, of course, that they talked first 
of Kirk ; but his adventures went hand in hand 
with the other adventure, and the talk flew back 
and forth between the Flying Dutchman and 


MAETIN! 185 

the Celestine, Kirk and Mr. Martin — or Mar- 
tin, the Maestro son. 

‘‘And it was the same old Celestine!^^ Ken 
marveled; “that ^s the queer part.” He 
fidgeted with the tongs for a moment and then 
said, “You did n^t know I once nearly ran away 
to sea on her, did you?” 

Two incredulous voices answered in the nega- 
tive. 

“It was when I was very, very young,” said 
Ken, removed by six months of hard experience 
from his escapade, “and very foolish. Never 
mind about it. But who ’d have thought she ’d 
restore all our friends and relatives to us in this 
way! By the way, where ’s the ill-starred 
Dutchman?** 

“Up at Bedford,” Kirk said. 

“Let her stay there,” said Ken. - “The sea- 
son ^s over here, for the Sturgis Water Line. 
And I ’m afraid of that boat. When I go up 
after Mother I ’ll try to sell the thing for what 
I can get.” 

Mother ! There was another topic ! Kirk 
didn’t even know she was coming home! The 
talk went off on a new angle, and plan followed 


186 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


plan, till Ken rose and announced that he was 
fairly starved. 

‘H worn to a wraith,^’ said he. 
have n’t had the time or the heart for a decent 
dinner since some time in the last century. 
Bring out the entire contents of the larder, Phil, 
and let ’s have a celebration.” 

Next morning, while the dew still hung in 
the hollows, Kirk got up and dressed himself 
without waking Ken. He tiptoed out into the 
new day, and made his way across the cool, 
mist-hung meadow to the Maestro ’s hedge. 
For an idea had been troubling him; it had 
waked with him, and he went now to make a 
restoration. 

All was quiet in the garden. The first fallen 
leaves rustled beneath Kirk’s feet as he went 
up the paved path and halted beside the dry 
fountain. He sat down cross-legged on the 
coping, with his chin in his hands, and turned 
his face to the wind’s kiss and the gathering 
warmth of the sun. Something stirred at the 
other side of the pool — a blown leaf, perhaps; 
but then a voice remarked: 

‘‘Morning, shipmate.” 


MAETIN! 


187 


Kirk sprang up. 

‘‘You ’re just who I wanted to see,” he said; 
“and I thought you might be wanting to take a 
walk in the garden, early.” 

^‘You thought right.” 

They had come toward each other around the 
pool’s rim, and met now at the cracked stone 
bench where two paths joined. Kirk put his 
hand through Martin’s arm. He always rather 
liked to touch people while he talked to them, 
to be sure that they remained a reality and 
would not slip away before he had finished what 
he wanted to say. 

“What brings you out so early, when you 
only fetched port last night?” Martin inquired, 
in his dry voice. 

“I wanted to talk to you,” Kirk said, “about 
that song.” 

“What, about the hat?” 

“No, not that one. The birthday one about 
the roses. You see, the Maestro gave it to me 
on my birthday, because he said he thought you 
did n’t need it any more. But you ’re here, and 
you do. It ’s your song, and I ought n’t to have 
it. So I came to give it back to you,” said 
Kirk. 


188 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


see,’^ said Martin. 

‘‘So please take it/’ Kirk pursued, quite as 
though he had it in his pocket, “and I ’ll try to 
forget it.” 

‘ ‘ I don ’t know, ’ ’ said Martin. ‘ ‘ The Maestro 
loves you now just about as much as he loved 
me when I was your size. His heart is divided 
— so let ’s divide the song, too. It ’ll belong to 
both of us. You — you made it rather easier for 
me to come back here ; do you know that ? ’ ’ 

“Why did you stay away so long?” Kirk 
asked. 

Martin kicked a pebble into the basin of the 
pool, where it rebounded with a sharp click. 

“I don’t know,” he said, after a pause. “It 
was very far away from the garden — those 
places down there make you forget a lot. And 
when the Maestro gave up his public life and 
retired, word trickled down to the tropics after 
a year or so that he ’d died. And there ’s a lot 
more that you wouldn’t understand, and I 
wouldn’t tell you if you could.” 

Another pebble spun into the pool. 

“Are you going to stay, now?” 

“Yes, I ’m going to stay.” 

“I !m glad,” said Kirk. They sat still for 


MARTINI 189 

some moments, and then Kirk had a sudden, 
shy inspiration. 

‘^Do you think, he ventured, ^^do you think 
it would be nice if the fountain could play, 
nowT^ 

‘^Ehr’ said Martin, waking from brooding 
thoughts. 

^‘The fountain — it hasn’t, you know, since 
you went. And the garden ’s been asleep ever 
since, just like a fairy-tale.” 

^‘A fairy-tale! H’m!” said Martin, with a 
queer laugh. “Well, let ’s wake the fountain, 
then.” 

They found the device that controlled the 
water, and wrenched it free. Kirk ran back 
down the path to listen, breathless, at the edge 
of the pool. There came first the rustle of 
water through long unused channels, then the 
shallow splash against the empty basin. Little 
by little the sound became deeper and more 
musical, till the still morning vibrated faintly 
to the mellow leap and ripple of the fountain’s 
jubilant voice. 

“Oh!” Kirk cried suddenly. “Oh, I’m 
happy! Aren’t you, Mr. Martin!” 

Martin looked down at the eager, joyous face, 


190 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


so expressive in spite of the blankness behind 
the eyes. His own face filled suddenly with a 
new light, and he put out his hands as if he 
were about to catch Eark to him. But the mo- 
ment passed; the reserve of long years, which 
he could not in an instant push from him, set- 
tled again in his angular face. He clasped his 
hands behind him. 

^^Yes,’^ said Martin, briefiy, ‘‘I ’m happy. 


CHAPTER XVI 


ANOTHER HOME-COMING 

M rs. STURGIS stepped eagerly off the 
twelve-five train on to the Bedford Sta- 
tion platform, and stood looking expectantly 
about her. A few seconds later Ken came 
charging through the crowd from the other end 
of the platform. They held each other for a 
moment at arms ’ length, in the silent, absorbing 
welcome when words seem insufficient; then 
Kenelm picked up his mother’s bag and tucked 
her hand through his arm. 

^‘Now don’t get a cab, or anything,” Mrs. 
Sturgis begged. ‘‘I can perfectly well walk to 
the street-car — or up to the house, for that mat- 
ter. Oh, I ’m so much, much better.” 

‘‘Well,” Ken said, “I thought we ’d have a 
little something to eat first, and then — ” 

“But we ’ll have lunch as soon as we get 
home, dear. What — ” 

“Well, the fact is,” Ken said hastily, “you 

191 


192 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


see we T^e not at Westover Street just now. 
We Ve been staying in the country for a while, 
at the jolliest old place, and, er — they want you 
to come up there for a while, too.’’ 

Ken had been planning different ways of tell- 
ing his mother of the passing of the Westover 
Street house, all the way down from Asquam. 
He could not, now, remember a single word of 
all those carefully thought out methods of ap- 
proach. 

don’t think I quite understand,” Mrs. 
Sturgis said. ‘‘Are you staying with friends? 
I didn’t know we knew any one in the coun- 
try.” 

They were in the middle of the street, and 
Ken chose to focus his attention on the traffic. 

“Let ’s get to the lunch place,” he said. 
“It ’s quieter there, to talk.” 

“Still wearing that old suit, dear?” Mrs. 
Sturgis said, touching Ken’s sleeve as he hung 
up his overcoat in the restaurant. 

‘ ‘ Er — this is my good suit, ’ ’ Ken murmured. 
“That is, it ’s the only suit I have — that is — ” 
“See here,” said Mrs. Sturgis, whose percep- 
tions were beginning to quicken as she faced a 
member of her family again with the barrier of 


ANOTHER HOME-COMING 193 


cautious letters thrown aside; “there been 
enough money, hasnT there?” 

“Lots,” Ken said hastily. “We ’ve been liv- 
ing royally — wait till you see. Oh, it ’s really 
a duck of a place — and Phil a perfect won- 
der.” 

**What a duck of a place?” 

“Applegate Farm. Oh law*! Mother dear, 
I ’ll have to tell you. It ’s only that we decided 
the old house was too expensive for us to run 
just for ourselves, so we got a nice old place in 
the country and fixed it up.” 

“You decided — ^you got a place in the coun- 
try? Do you mean to say that you poor, in- 
nocent children have had to manage things like 
thatV^ 

“We didn’t want you to bother. Please 
don’t worry, now.” Ken looked anxiously 
across the table at his mother, as though he 
rather expected her to go off in a collapse again. 

“Nonsense, Ken, I’m perfectly all right! 
But — but — oh, please begin at the beginning and 
unravel all this.” 

“Wait till we get on the train,” Ken said. 
“I want to arrange my topics. I didn’t mean 
to spring it on you this way, at all. Moth- 


194 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


er. I wish Phil had been doing this jobP’ 

But Ken’s topics didn’t stay arranged. As 
the train rumbled on toward Bayside, the tale 
was drawn from him piecemeal; what he tried 
to conceal, his mother soon enough discovered 
by a little questioning. Her son dissimulated 
very poorly, she found to her amusement. And, 
after all, she must know the whole, sooner or 
later. It was only his wish to spare her any 
sudden shock which made him hold back now. 

^‘And you mean to tell me that you poor dears 
have been scraping along on next to nothing, 
while selfish Mother has been spending the rem- 
nant of the fortune at Hilltop?” 

‘^Oh, pshaw. Mother!” Ken muttered, “there 
was plenty. And look at you, all nice and well 
for us. It would have been a pretty sight to see 
us flourishing around with the money while you 
perished forlorn, wouldn’t it?” 

“Think of all the wealth we ’ll have now/^ 
Mrs. Sturgis suggested, “all the hundreds and 
hundreds that Hilltop has been gobbling.” 

“I ’d forgotten that,” whistled Ken. 
“Hi-ya ! We ’ll be bloated aristocrats, we will ! 
We ’ll have a steak for dinner!” 

“Oh, you poor chicks!” said his mother. 


ANOTHER HOME-COMING 195 


She must hear about the Sturgis Water Line, 
and hints of the Maestro, and how wonderful 
Phil had been, teaching Kirk and all, and how 
perfectly magnificent Kirk was altogether — a 
jumbled rigamarole of salvaged motor-boats, 
reclaimed farm-house, music, somebody’s son at 
sea, and dear knows what else, till Mrs. Sturgis 
hardly knew whether or not any of this wild 
dream was verity. Yet the train — and later, 
the trolley-car — continued to roll through un- 
familiar country, and Mrs. Sturgis resigned 
herself trustfully to her son’s keeping. 

At the Asquam Station, Hop was drawn up 
with his antiquated surrey. He wore a sprig of 
goldenrod in his buttonhole, and goldenrod 
bobbed over the old horse’s forelock. 

‘‘Proud day, ma’am,” said Hop, as Ken 
helped his mother into the wagon, “Proud day, 
I ’m sure.” 

“As if I were a wedding or something,” whis- 
pered Mrs. Sturgis. “Ken, I ’m excited I” 

She looked all about at the unwinding view up 
Winterbottom Road — so familiar to Ken, who 
was trying to see it all with fresh eyes. They 
climbed out at the gate of the farm, and Hop 
turned his beast and departed. Half-way up 


196 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


the sere dooryard, Ken touched his wondering 
mother ^s arm and drew her to a standstill. 
There lay Applegate Farm, tucked like a big 
gray boulder between its two orchards. Asters, 
blue and white, clustered thick to its threshold, 
honeysuckle swung buff trumpets from the vine 
about the windows. The smoke from the white 
chimney rose and drifted lazily away across the 
russet meadow, which ended at the once mys- 
terious hedge. The place was silent with the 
silence of a happy dream, basking content in 
the hazy sunlight of the late September after- 
noon. 

Mrs. Sturgis, with a little sound of surprised 
delight, was about to move forward again, when 
her son checked her once more. For as she 
looked, Kirk came to the door. He was carry- 
ing a pan and a basket. He felt for the sill with 
a sandaled toe, descended to the wide door- 
stone, and sat down upon it with the pan on his 
knees. He then proceeded to shell Lima beans, 
his face lifted to the sun, and the wind stirring 
the folds of his faded green blouse. As he 
worked he sang a perfectly original song about 
various things. 

Mrs. Sturgis could 'be detained no longer. 


ANOTHEE HOME-COMING 197 


She ran across the brown grass and caught 
Kirk into her arms — tin pan, bean-pods, and all. 
She kissed his mouth, and his hair, and his eyes, 
and murmured ecstatically to him. 

‘‘Mother! M other Kirk cried, his hands 
everywhere at once; and then, “Phil! Quick!'* 

But Phil was there. When the Sturgis fam- 
ily, breathless, at last sorted themselves out, 
every one began talking at once. 

Don't you really think it 's a nice place T’ 

“You came sooner than we expected; we 
meant to be at the gate.’’ 

“Oh, my dear dears!” 

“ Mother y come in now and see everything!” 
(This from Kirk, anxious to exhibit what he 
himself had never seen.) 

“Come and take your things off — oh, you do 
look so well, dear.” 

“Look at the nice view!” 

“Don’t you think it looks like a real house, 
even if we did get it?” 

“Oh, children dear! let me gather my poor 
scattered wits.” 

So Mrs. Sturgis was lovingly pulled and 
pushed and steered into the dusky little living- 
room, where a few pieces of Westover Street 


198 


THE HAPPY VENTURE 


furniture greeted her strangely, and where a 
most jolly fire burned on the hearth. Felicia 
removed her mother ’s hat ; Ken put her into the 
big chair and spirited away her bag. Mrs. 
Sturgis sat gazing about her — at the white 
cheese-cloth curtains, the festive bunches of 
flowers in every available jug, the kitchen chairs 
painted a decorative blue, and at the three ra- 
diant faces of her children. 

Kirk, who was plainly bursting with some 
plan, pulled his sister’s sleeve. 

^^Phil,” he whispered loudly, ‘‘do you think 
now would be a good time to do it T ’ 

“What? Oh — yes! Yes, go ahead, to be 
sure,” said Felicia. 

Kirk galloped forthwith to the melodeon, 
which Mrs. Sturgis had so far failed to identify 
as a musical instrument, seated himself before 
it, and opened it with a bang. He drew forth all 
the loudest stops — the trumpet, the diapason — 
for his paean of welcome. 

“It ’s a triumphal march, in your honor,” 
Felicia whispered hastily to her mother. “He 
spent half of yesterday working at it.” 

Mrs. Sturgis, who had looked sufficiently be- 
wildered’ became frankly incredulous. But 


ANOTHER HOME-COMING 199 


the room was now filled with the strains of 
Kirk^s music. The Maestro would not, per- 
haps, have altogether approved of its bombastic 
nature — ^but triumphant it certainly was, and 
sincere. And what the music lacked was amply 
made up in Kirk’s face as he played — an ineffa- 
ble expression of mingled joy, devotion, and the 
solid satisfaction of a creator in his own handi- 
work. He finished his performance with one 
long-drawn and really superb chord, and then 
came to his mother on flying feet. 

meant it to be much, much nicer,” he ex- 
plained, ‘Gike a real one that the Maestro 
played. But I made it all for you. Mother, any- 
way — and the other was for Napoleon or some- 
body. ” 

‘^Oh, you unbelievable old darling I” said 
Mrs. Sturgis. ‘‘As if I wouldn’t rather have 
that than all the real ones! But, Ken — ^you 
didn’t tell me even that he could play do-re- 
mi-fa!” 

“Well, MotJier!^^ Ken protested, “I couldn’t 
tell you everything,'^ ^ 

And Mrs. Sturgis, striving to straighten her 
tangled wits, admitted the truth of this remark. 

After supper, which was a real feast, includ- 


200 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


ing bona fide mutton-chops and a layer cake, 
the Sturgis family gathered about the fireside. 

^‘This is home to you,’’ Mrs. Sturgis said. 
^^How strange it seems! But you ’ve made it 
home — I can see that. How did you, you sur- 
prising people? And such cookery and all; I 
don’t know you!” 

Phil and Ken looked at one another in some 
amusement. 

‘^The cookery,” said Felicia, ’ll admit 
came by degrees. Do you remember that very 
first bread?” 

I recall rightly, I replaced that loose 
stone in the well-coping with it, did n’t I?” said 
Ken, ‘^or did I use it for the Dutchman's bow 
anchor?” 

‘‘Nothing was wrong with those biscuits, to- 
night, ’ ’ Mrs. Sturgis said. ‘ ‘ Come and sit here 
with me, my Kirk.” 

Felicia blew out the candles that had graced 
the supper-table, drew the curtains across the 
windows where night looked in, and came back 
to sit on the hearth at her mother’s feet. The 
contented silence about the fire was presently 
broken by a tapping at the outer door, and Ken 
rose to admit the Maestro and Martin. The 


ANOTHEE HOME-COMING 201 


Maestro, after a peep within, expressed himself 
loth to disturb such a happy time, but Ken 
haled him in without more ado. 

^‘Nonsense, sir,” he said. ‘‘Why — why 
you ’re part of us. Mother would n’t have seen 
half our life here till she ’d met you.” 

So the Maestro seated himself in the circle of 
firelight, and Martin retired behind a veil of 
tobacco-smoke — ^with permission — ^in the comer. 

“We came,” said the Maestro, after a time of 
other talk, “because we ’re going away so soon, 
and — ” 

“Going away!” Three blank voices inter- 
rupted him. Kirk left even his mother’s arm, 
to find his way to the Maestro ’s. 

“But I do go away,” said the old gentleman, 
lifting a hand to still all this protest, “every 
autumn — to town. And I came partly to ask — 
to beg you — that when cold weather seems to 
grip Applegate Farm too bitterly, you will 
come, all of you, to pay an old man a long visit. 
May I ask it of you, too, Mrs. Sturgis? My 
house is so big — Martin and I will find ourselves 
lost in one corner of it. And — ’’ he frowned 
tremendously and shook Kirk’s arm, “I ab- 
solutely forbid Kirk to stop his music. How 


202 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


can he study music without his master? How 
can he study without coming to stay with his 
master, as it was in the good old days of ap- 
prenticeship?’’ 

Felicia looked about the little shadow-flecked 
room. 

know what you ’re thinking,” said the 
Maestro, smoothing Kirk’s dark hair. You ’re 
hating the thought of leaving Applegate Farm. 
But perhaps the winter wind will sing you a 
different tune. Do you not think so, Mrs. 
Sturgis?” 

Mrs. Sturgis nodded. Their experience 
does n’t yet embrace all the phases of this,” she 
said. 

“Yes,” said the Maestro, “some day before 
the snows come, you will come to me. And 
we ’ll fill that big house with music, and songs, 
and laughing — yes, and work, too. Ah, please ! ’ ’ 
said the Maestro, quite pathetically. 

Felicia put her hand out to his. 

“We will come, dear Maestro,” she said, 
“when this little fire will not keep us warm any 
longer. ’ ’ 

“Thank you,” said the Maestro. 

From behind them came murmurous talk of 


ANOTHEE HOME-COMING 203 


ships — Ken and Martin discussing the Celestine 
and her kind, and the magic ports below the 
Line. Kirk whispered suddenly to the Maestro, 
who protested. 

‘‘Oh, please!^’ begged Kirk, his plea becom- 
ing audible. Really it ’s a nice thing. I 
know Ken makes fun of it, but I have learned 
a lot from it, have n’t I? Please, Maestro !” 

“Very well, naughty one,” said the musician; 
“if your mother will forgive us.” 

He bowed to her, and then moved with Kirk 
into the unlit part of the room where the little 
organ stood. With a smile of tender amuse- 
ment, he sat down at the odd little thing and 
ran his fingers up and down the short, yellowed 
keyboard. Then, with Kirk lost in a dream of 
rapt worship and listening ecstasy beside him, 
he began to play. And his touch made of the 
little worn melodeon a singing instrument, glori- 
fied beyond its own powers by the music he 
played. 

The dimly firelit room swam with the ex- 
quisite echo of the melody. Ken and Martin 
sat quiet in their corner. Felicia gazed at the 
dear people in the home she had made : at Ken, 
who had made it with her — dear old Ken, the 


204 


THE HAPPY VENTUEE 


defender of his kindred ; at Kirk, for whom they 
had kept the joy of living alight ; at the Maestro, 
the beautiful spirit of the place ; at her mother, 
given back to them at last. Mrs. Sturgis looked 
wonderingly at her children in the firelight, but 
most of all at Kirk, whose face was lighted, as 
he leaned beside the Maestro, with a radiance 
she had never before seen there. 

And without, the silver shape of a waning 
moon climbed between the black, sighing boughs 
of the laden orchard, and stood above the broad, 
gray roof of Applegate Farm. 



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